Girl, uninterrupted

Dir: David Fincher

With: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara

Running time: 158 minutes

WHEN a director is telling a story that 65 million people have read and legions have seen in film form, he has something of a mountain to climb. If anyone was going to be a cross between Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and a goat with Velcroed hooves it was David Fincher, the American director of Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac and The Social Network.

Need a smart guide through a complex procedural thriller? A director not afraid to cross a boundary or two? Fincher fits the description, but whether you think he has done the business in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo depends where you are starting from.

For those unfamiliar with Stieg Larsson's trilogy of novels and the three Swedish language films that have gone before, Fincher's film will be a gripping, stylish, fast-paced kick in the hornets' nest of a movie. This is the film Larsson fans fantasised about when the idea for a picture was first mooted.

And yet, and yet. If you are already a member of the fan club then this US remake might leave you feeling a tad Larssoned out. Stieged and fatigued. That this is a Tattoo too far. After all, how many times can a person experience a thriller and still be thrilled?

And yet, and yet. The first thing to notice is the startling new pace. With a screenplay by Steven Zaillian (Moneyball, Schindler's List), the action starts off at a lick and keeps on ticking. Before we get to the tale, though, Fincher provides a wickedly good, part-Bond, part-punk, wholly nightmarish opening credits sequence. This is not a film that's going to ask politely for your attention. Like its heroine, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara taking over from Noomi Rapace) it aims to grab you by the attention span from the off.

Meet Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a principled journalist who would no more hack the phone of a C-list celeb than he would indulge in cross-dressing. He's all man is Mikael, which you can tell from the way he wears bum-freezer jackets in brass monkey weather. Stung in a libel suit, Blomkvist has taken up a commission from a wealthy industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer). The job is ostensibly to write a history of the Vanger enterprises: in reality it is to investigate the disappearance of Henrik's beloved niece, Harriet, decades before.

While Fincher and Zaillian busy themselves setting up that part of the story, the audience is introduced to Salander. Armed with her trusty Apple Mac, the investigator with the look of a Goth and the heart of a Boadicea is a born outsider. Like the natural-born filmmaker he is, Fincher doesn't waste time introducing the character via other people's assessments of her. Instead, he shows her in action. The scene in the subway where Salander encounters a mugger tells you everything you need to know about this young woman and her attitude to victimhood.

That is amplified in later scenes that earn the film its 18 certificate. Fincher certainly hasn't watered down the content to grab a bigger, younger audience. The material remains extremely difficult to watch, but the scenes are at least in context.

Blomkvist and Lisbeth, hacker and investigative journalist, get to work on Harriet's disappearance. Zaillian has reduced a doorstopper of a book to a near novella, but at more than two and a half hours this is still a long haul. Unlike in the book, where readers who didn't want the tale to end were hoping for one more twist and turn, the machination becomes exhausting.

Fincher rarely allows the pace to slacken, nor does he let you forget for a second that it's a movie director in charge here. Even the most ardent pro-European would have to admit that the Swedish films were often like a plod through treacle, as though each member of the cast and crew had taken a solemn oath to reproduce the book faithfully. Fincher's take on Tattoo is a genuinely cinematic, firing-on-all-cylinders thriller. He even makes the computer scenes arresting (all that practise on The Social Network one supposes).

A stellar supporting cast including Plummer, Robin Wright (as Blomkvist's publisher), and Stellan Skarsgard as another Vanger family member, add further touches of class to an already stylish set up. The hero and heroine, Craig and Mara, do the rest. The Bond star does a spot-on job as Blomkvist, his natural humour adding an edge to what could have been a prig of a character. As for the Rapace versus Rooney tussle, the latter wins it by a whisker, if only because she has a cooler haircut.

That is the essence of Fincher's film – it's cool. Swedish noir cool with a frosting of Hollywood gloss. Unlike that drink of Bond's, The Girl series has been shaken and stirred. Sup it and see.

Opens Boxing Day.