Where I Watched It: Netflix (but it left on June 30th)

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

Description Provided By: IFTSC

I’ve had a brush with Dragon Tattoo before. I own this damn thing on DVD, somewhere in my collection. It was a blind purchase at the time, something that was on sale during Black Friday that I thought was up my alley. I do remember attempting to watch this at night one time, and falling asleep. Many moons later, I tackled this again, in broad daylight, and finally stayed awake.

It’s not a good sign of where this review is headed when i tell you I struggle to stay awake. I don’t know if this Dragon Tattoo/Lizabeth Salander thing just isn’t for me, or perhaps it was better with the original trilogy that was in a foreign language, but still helped to launch the career of Naomi Rapace. I do enjoy most David Fischer works, and he ranks up there as one of the few directors that can get me to a film. There’s just something about Dragon tattoo that misses the mark for me.

I just never get pulled all the way in. I know it didn’t grip me enough to keep me awake the first time, and this second attempt I was fighting to stay focused on the film and not just randomly play on my phone because we now all just have this thing that can distract us whenever needed. But, my takeaways from this viewing is that this is its not my thing. Fincher or not, I will never fully embrace Dragon Tattoo. That being said, it is very weird that they never finished this series. This ends with a hanging chad, something clearly meant to resolve in the next book/film, but the English audiences only ever got one film from Fincher with Rooney Mara.

The rest of the cast is solid, from Daniel Craig playing a rather average dude who isn’t expected to kick, punch, and shoot his way through every scene, to Stellan Sarsgaard, always up for a little fun chewing the scene. I would say it’s longer than it needs to be, except that’s probably not true. The movie needed to get the essence of the book, so this probably just was the right length. It’s just, after two attempts, officially not really my thing.

The Blind Perspective: There are times, when they are looking at photos that you can’t see, but are important to the plot structure that you’d be very grateful for audio description. The plot is hard enough to follow as is, and there are many scenes with sparse dialogue. I would never recommend a blind individual attempt this without audio description.

Final Thoughts: Well, it’s off my watchlist at least.

Final Grade: C+