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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo | 2011 | R | - 9.9.6

A remake of the eponymous 2009 Swedish film based on the best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson: journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) searches for a woman that has been missing for forty years, aided by Lisbeth (Rooney Mara), a young, troubled computer hacker. Also with Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Steven Berkoff. Directed by David Fincher. [2:38]

SEX/NUDITY 9 - We see the rape of a young woman: A man rips off her clothing as she is chained to a bed, we see her bare buttocks and back as the man puts his face between her buttocks and begins to kiss, he removes his clothing (his bare back and chest are visible) and mounts the young woman, making a crude remark about anal sex, and he thrusts on top her as she screams; the graphic rape continues for a few minutes as the young woman shouts and we later see her climb out of bed and put on clothing (no nudity is visible while the man is wearing an open robe and a portion of his bare chest is visible).
 A man's bare chest, back and torso are visible when he is chained to the ground by a young woman, who forces him to watch a video depicting the violent anal rape he perpetrated on her; after violently kicking a large, metal phallic object into the man's anus (implied, not seen), the young woman warns him that she must never catch him having sex, she carves, "I am a rapist pig" on his chest, and warns him that she will upload the rape video to the Internet (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
 A young woman instructs a man to remove his clothing (we see his bare chest and back and a portion of his bare buttocks are exposed when his brief-style underwear is lowered), a young woman enters the room and takes off her pants (she is nude from the waist down), climbs on top of the man, they kiss, she pulls down his underwear and they have sex (we see the young woman's bare breasts and they change position); the man thrusts on top of the young woman and we see them in bed together later and the man's bare back is visible as well as the young woman's bare breasts. We see a man and a young woman having sex: the young woman is thrusting on top of the man (we see her bare breasts and the bare chest of the man), sexual moans are heard and both appear to climax.
 Two young women kiss passionately, one of the young women slides her hand to the crotch of the other young woman and sex is implied when we see the young women wake up side by side in bed; both appear topless (the bare breasts of one young woman are seen and the other's are covered by her arm) and they kiss after one asks the other to leave and she climbs out of bed. In the intro, we see a male and a female "body" made of black oil: the two bodies kiss briefly, and we see what is implied to be the bare back of the male body and possibly the nude torso of the female body being covered in additional oil.
 A man takes a young woman's hand and places it on his crotch, and he instructs her to unzip his pants and manually stimulate him (no nudity is visible); the young woman resists as the man pushes her head to his crotch and we hear the sounds of oral sex and see her head bobbing over his crotch (the young woman is then seen in a bathroom, spitting).
 The bare breasts of a young woman are visible when she takes off her shirt and steps into a shower; we see the profile of her bare breasts and her bare back, buttocks and legs. A young woman removes her clothing, and we see her take out bust enhancement cutlets; she is wearing sheer underwear, hose and a bra. We see blurry photos of a teen girl; they are implied to be nude and her bare torso and hip are visible. A man shows a blurry photograph of a nude teen girl to a woman, and the woman confirms that it was a picture of her, taken by her father. On multiple occasions we see a man stripped down to brief-style underwear and his bare chest and back are visible. A woman wearing only a large T-shirt climbs out of bed and speaks to a shirtless man; his bare chest is visible and she makes a remark about waking up to a cold bed when she is in her home. A large shadowed profile of a woman undressing is seen behind a screen: the woman makes a remark to a man that she is only staying one night, the man enters the room and we see the shadowed profile of him climbing onto the bed and sex is implied. A man slides his hand under a young woman's shirt, he then moves his hand and the young woman asks him to put it back.
 A man leans in to kiss a woman, and she turns her face and he kisses her cheek. A man and a woman stand very close and rub faces. A young woman is visibly upset when she sees a man wrap his arm around a woman and the man and woman hold hands. A woman rubs a man's leg under the table, she hints to another man that she and the man have a sexual affair going and she points to her wedding ring after the other man makes a remark about not marrying the woman.
 A woman tells a man that her father had raped her when she was 14, and it continued for a year until he died, at which time her brother began to rape her. A man makes a crude sexual remark about being aroused by killing women, and he then justifies his remark to another man by saying that everyone had a sexual proclivity, and his just "needed more towels." A man asks a young woman a series of personal questions about her sexual habits, including if she had any STDs, how many sexual partners she had in the past month and how many were male (the young woman does not answer). A young woman asks a man how his sex life is going, and the young woman then threatens to tattoo the man's forehead if he tries to have a sex life (she had previously tattooed, "I am a rapist pig" to the man's chest). A young woman says that a man had an affair with a woman, and that it had ruined his marriage but not hers. A young woman says that a man occasionally performs oral sex on a woman and she adds "not enough" in her opinion. A young woman tells a man that she thought he was going to force her to perform oral sex. A woman tells a man that a teen girl had been an enigma, that she would wear her "tightest sweater" and go to school, and then come home and study the Bible.

VIOLENCE/GORE 9 - A man snaps handcuffs on a young woman, she struggles and shoves him, we see her waking from presumably being knocked unconscious, she is handcuffed at her wrists and chained at her ankles, face-down on a bed, and the man mounts her, makes a crude remark about anal sex, and he thrusts on top her as she screams, anally raping her: she screams and shakes her body trying to resist, the graphic rape continues for a few minutes as the young woman shouts, and we later see her stumble from the bed, walking with difficulty and wincing in pain, and we see her later in the shower with blood running down her legs as she washes (she has a swollen lip and an abrasion on her ankle).
 A young woman presses a Taser to a man's throat, he falls to the ground (we later see a puddle of what is presumably urine), he wakes up, and he is stripped naked, his mouth is duct-taped shut, his hands are tied and she uses a drill to anchor the man's legs to the ground: the young woman tells the man that she had videotaped him raping her (we see a television playing a video of the violent anal rape of the young woman by the man), the man rolls over and the young woman uses the Taser on him again and we hear his muffled screams as the young woman threatens to upload the rape video if anything ever happens to her; the young woman then takes a large metal phallic-shaped object and kicks it into the man's anus (this is implied and not seen), we hear the man's muffled cries and shouting and the young woman climbs onto the man's chest and carves, "I am a rapist pig" with a tattoo gun (we see it covered with blood and shiny as the young woman shouts at the man that she is insane and will kill him).
 We see many black and white crime scene photographs of dead women, in various poses and with assorted injuries as a young woman scrolls through them on her computer, explaining to a man the nature of the crimes: A woman's hands are bound, she appears to be covered in blood in all of the photographs (the young woman explains that her body had been tied up, she was raped and her head was bashed in with a rock); we see many bloody stab wounds covering the corpse of a woman (a young woman explains that the woman had been raped and stabbed to death); we see a woman's body on the ground with blood sprayed over her and the partial corpse of a cow next to her (the young woman explains that the woman had been murdered and raped, and then the cow was killed and the blood of the cow was spread over the woman; the dead body of a woman is shown with her head down, her neck tied and a small amount of blood is visible on her legs (a young woman explains that the woman was raped and a canary was found shoved inside her); the ripped up carcass of a pigeon is seen tied to the bloody, beaten body of a woman (a young woman explains that the woman was raped and killed, with the dead pigeon tied to her); we see the burnt remains of a building (a young woman explains that a woman had been murdered and burned inside a building); as a young woman shows the man another picture he says he had heard enough. On two other occasions we see a young woman briefly scrolling through the graphic crime scene photographs on a computer.
 We see a man with his neck in a brace and his arms strapped to a collar, a man pulls a lever that jerks the trapped man upright, balancing him seated on an ottoman, and the trapped man has a cut on his lip and a bandage on his forehead is oozing blood: the captor discusses at length how he had tortured and killed women, taking up after his father, who had also tortured and killed women and had died; he explains that he is going to kill the man, he wraps a plastic bag around the man's head, the man gasps for air as the bag expands and contracts, and the captor holds a knife to the man's bare chest when a young woman smashes his face with a golf club (we see teeth and blood spray from the man's mouth) and she cuts down the tight-up man and rips the bag from his face.
 A man rapes a young woman by forcing her to perform oral sex on him: we see the man shove her head toward his crotch, and the young woman is later seen rinsing her mouth and forcing herself to vomit into a toilet.
 We hear a gunshot and a man ducks, blood is seen on his forehead, he runs as we hear multiple additional gunshots, and the man is then seen in a bathtub, rinsing a large amount of blood from his head, where a small wound is seen on his temple and he explains to a young woman that he had been shot; the young woman pours liquor onto the man's open wound and sews it shut, and we later see the man with a bandage over the wound.
 A young woman asks a man if she can kill another man, the man nods yes and we see the young woman cock a gun and chase the other man: the man is seen with his mouth bloodied as he speeds away in a car and the young woman follows him on a motorcycle, the car and motorcycle dart and weave across a bridge, and the young woman cuts in front of the car, causing the driver to swerve, crash over a wall and flip onto its side; the young woman pulls a gun, approaches the car where the man is still alive and we see the car explode while the young woman watches and then walks away.
 As a woman describes a scene to a man we see the following: A man hovers above his teenage daughter and places a belt around her neck and the woman explains that he was trying to kill her while bragging about the women that he had raped and killed, she explains that she escaped and ran to a dock, and we see a teen girl standing on a dock and as her father approaches she hits him with a large oar, knocking him into the water, where she pushes down on his head until his lifeless body bobs; the teen girl turns, we see her teen brother watching and the woman explains that although she had killed her father, her brother took over killing and torturing women.
 A man grabs a young woman's bag and runs up a flight of stairs; the young woman chases him, catching him on an escalator, they fight and wrestle, the young woman smashes the man's face against the stairs as people stare, and she escapes unharmed.
 A gunman leads a man down a hallway and into a basement where smoke and gas fills the room, as the gunman places a gasmask over his face and the other man falls to the ground.
 As an older man narrates, we see a car accident: a car appears to have driven under a gasoline tanker and blood is seen on the car driver's face (the older man explains that it took a long time for people to pull the man from the car and they were worried that it would explode). We see a flashback to police and volunteers sweeping a wooded area and looking in a lake while trying to find a teen girl (an older man narrates that the police never found the girl's body). As we see another flashback of police and volunteers searching a wooded area, an older man explains that he could not "dig up" an entire island, which is why he had not found a missing girl's body.
 A young woman shouts at a man, and we hear the electronic sound of a Taser starting as a young woman warns a man that she will "more than alarm" him if he tries to hurt her. A man shouts at an older man, saying that he had been promised a man's "head on a plate."
 A young woman discovers a man lying on the ground, and we see a doctor in a hospital explain to the young woman that the man had a brain hemorrhage and a stroke, and adding that if he recovered he would have neurological issues (we see the man recovered, but unable to speak and with very limited motor coordination). A man leads a young woman to a record room in a police station and warns her that she should not look at what she is going to see if she had recently eaten.
 We hear a gunshot, a man looks surprised and an older man tells him that a man is probably hunting, adding, "He probably shot his own dinner." A man holds a handgun and tells a second man that they should go hunting; he then advises that he would have better luck with a gun than a knife and the second man drops the man's knife on a counter. As a man investigates an empty house, we see him pick up a knife; the owner of the house approaches and the man tries to sneak away, but he trips and falls alerting the owner, who invites the man in for a drink.
 A woman explains to a man that as a teenager a young woman had helped her escape in the trunk of her car; we see a flashback of the teen girl hiding in a cellar and then sneaking into the back of a car and the woman explains that the young woman who helped her told the teen girl to leave everything behind, so the police would not believe she had run away.
 A man tells a young woman that tattooing over a large abrasion on her ankle will be painful; we see her grit her teeth as the man tattoos her bruised and swollen ankle. A young woman winces nervously when a man touches her shoulder. A man shows a woman a large abrasion on his neck, saying that her brother had him hooked up to a harness and was going to kill him (the woman begins to cry).
 We see an EMT race toward a car, and the driver of the car explains that an older man had collapsed while they were talking; we hear that the man is weak and will need surgery, and that he might not recover and does not have a DNR (the older man is seen recovered and in a wheelchair).
 In the intro, we see a male and female "body" made of black oil, wires come from the eyes of one of the bodies, a wire catches on fire as it leaves one of the other bodies and the female body's head blooms into a flower; the male body punches the female body repeatedly in the face and the face devolves into liquid that sprays in slow-motion and then reforms into the female face.
 An older man tells a man that a missing woman's body had been found, that she was decapitated, and that her arms were ripped off and the body set on fire. A man watches a television news program where a female reporter announces that a man had been murdered, and was shot in the head three times in a "classic gang execution." A man explains to another man that his family had changed completely after the death of his sister when they were teenagers. An older man gravely tells a man that someone in his family had murdered a teen girl. A man tells an older woman that a teen girl in a photograph had been murdered the same day the photograph was taken and the older woman looks upset. An elderly man tells a man that a man was buried next to his father, after having died in an accident at a construction site many years ago. An older man tells a man that a teen girl had disappeared, and that he did not believe she had run away, but that she had been kidnapped. An older man tells a man that the body of his deceased brother, who drowned, had washed up on the shore very close to his house. An older man uses the drift pattern of his deceased brother's drowned corpse to explain that a teen girl could not have drowned. We see multiple instances of newspaper headlines announcing deaths: a man reads a headline announcing a man's drowning and a young woman reads a headline about a young woman's body being discovered. A young woman tells a man that she had tried to kill her father, burning over 80% of his body, which caused her to become a ward of the state. A woman tells a man that she knows the story of a teen girl that had gone missing, saying it was taught to children as an example of why one should not trust strangers. An older man explains to a man that his brother had beaten his wife and children. A man asks a woman if she thought a missing teen girl's father was abusive. A woman asks a man if he is afraid to be in the same room with her father. A man reads aloud multiple Bible verses and we see the text on the screen: A dove will have its wings ripped from it and its burnt body tied to a person, and a woman, if found to be a witch, would be killed. A young woman listens to a Bible verse describing the preparation of a sacrificial lamb. A man tells a young woman that he needs her to help him catch a "killer of women." An older man tells a man that his brother had joined the Nazi movement and "died a martyr to the cause." An elderly policeman tells a man about a policeman who had been relentless in trying to find out what had happened to a murdered woman, calling it his "Rebecca case." A man asks an elderly policeman about his "Rebecca case" and the man describes how he had been unable to find who murdered a young woman. We see a young woman typing keywords into a computer, including "decapitation, murder, fire and corpses." We see a file on a young woman's computer that appears to describe how different women had been tortured and killed; we can read, "head beaten with rock" in a table. A man overhears a man jokingly tell an older man that if another older man had tried to shoot a man, the man would not be alive. A man reads to a young woman a list of arrests for drunkenness, drug possession and assault and that she had been arrested recently for attacking a man with a broken bottle; the young woman shouts at the man, the man threatens to have the young woman institutionalized, she storms away and we hear the young woman scream as elevator doors close. A man watches a television reporter announce that a man had been accused of illegal arms dealing, the accused man sued the accuser for libel and the accuser was found guilty on 16 counts and has to pay a large fine. We see television headlines announcing that a man was being investigated for illegal arms dealing. A man tells a woman that a man makes the majority of his wealth from illegal arms dealing and drug smuggling. A man remarks that it is harder to shoot and miss someone than to shoot and kill someone. A woman jokingly tells a man that she had found another man "at death's door" as he walked in the cold. A man criticizes a young woman's appearance. A teen girl playfully tells her father, "I'm not dangerous" after she pauses to pray.
 A teen girl wipes drool from the corner of an ailing elderly man's mouth.

LANGUAGE 6 - About 11 F-words and its derivatives (on multiple occasions we see a young woman wearing a shirt featuring three F-words), 7 sexual references, 2 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 1 mild obscenity, name-calling (dumb, criminal, different, fool, thieves, misers, bullies, most detestable group of people you will ever meet, useless, town drunk, quite detestable to put it mildly, crazy, obsessed uncle, very messed up drunken father, idiot, convicted liar, libelist, handsome but useless, lackies, Sweden's Charles Ponzi), 2 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A young woman feeds another young woman a pill at a rave party (it is implied to be Ecstasy) and a man tells a young woman that he will just assume that money given to her will be used for drugs. Throughout the movie we see men and women drinking liquor and beer, a young woman drinks alcoholic beverages and we see crowds of people drinking at a bar and people drinking at parties, a man is referred to frequently as dying while drunk, a woman explains that as a teen she had taken advantage of a man's drunkenness and pushed him into a lake, a man reads a young woman's arrest log and we hear that she had been arrested for drunkenness and drug use, and a man tells another man that he and his sister had been taken from their mother when they were children due to her excessive drinking. Men are seen smoking cigarettes frequently, a young woman smokes cigarettes throughout the entire film, a man turns down a cigarette from a young woman, saying that he had quit smoking, and a woman tells an older woman that she cannot smoke in a hospital and the woman continues to smoke.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Serial rapists and murderers, libel, slander, revenge, lunatic serial killers, psychopaths, Nazi sympathizers, secrets, anti-Semites, computer hackers, mystery.

MESSAGE - Family secrets can be very lethal.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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