It's Just Movies

— by VICTOR RODRIGUEZ —

I am a huge fan of Swedish movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I thought Noomi Rapace just nailed the part of Lisbeth. Who cares if she was older than the character in the book? In the “Bourne” books, the character of Jason Bourne is supposed to be an older man, but could you really imagine those movies doing as well without Matt Damon? Neither can I. And the same goes for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I cannot picture this character played by any actress other than Noomi.

When I heard that David Fincher (“Se7en,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) was remaking an American version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” my immediate reaction was that of suspicion and mixed feelings. Part of me thought it was great … maybe now I can finally understand what the heck they are saying. However, another part of me thought, “Are they going to screw it up?”

I don’t want to prejudge. I hate it when people do, so I refuse to do the same thing. I am willing to give Fincher a chance. When I heard that they had cast Carey Mulligan for the part, I was thrilled! I loved her in “An Education,” where she was fantastic. I thought if anyone can pull this off, it would be her. This piece of news calmed me down a lot. However, a few weeks later I heard some sad news. Mulligan had backed out of the role and now they were left scratching their heads wondering who was going to fill in.

There were tons of rumors going around on the web about who would take the role of Lisbeth. I even heard that Emma Watson (Hermione of the “Harry Potter” series) was trying out for the part. Can you picture little Hermione doing some of the scenes required for the role? I’m sure there some pervs out there who could, but not me. I was glad to hear that that was just a rumor. Of course, there were other women who tried out for the role, but none really impressed me. When I heard that they had settled on Rooney Mara my first reaction was, “WHO?”

I have never seen her work. Mara (who is shown in the pictures above in character as Salander) is a 25-year-old relative newcomer who has mostly done TV spots here and there. Her big break came with “Youth in Revolt” with Michael Cera, which I have not yet seen. However, I did finally see her in a small role in “The Social Network.” In fact, she starts off the movie with co-star Jesse Eisenberg. I paid close attention because I wanted to see how good of an actress she was. I needed to know if she was capable of pulling this off, but more importantly: Is she going to do this role justice?

I am not concerned about her doing a better job than Noomi. At this point, I just want to see a decent performance. If the performance is great, AWESOME! However, I won’t hold my breath because what I saw in those first 15 minutes of “The Social Network” wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t earth shattering either. To be fair, that was a small role and we didn’t get to see much of Mara after that first scene, thus we didn’t really get to witness any real performance. Maybe she’ll do a good job, maybe not.

I just hope that Fincher knows what he is doing. I am not a casting director, but I have one question. Did they even consider Anna Kendrick for the part? I think she’d be perfect for it.

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Follow Victor Rodriguez on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ReviewIt2009.