Is there anyone over the age of three and under 75 who doesn’t know that David Fincher‘s The Girl With Dragon Tattoo (Sony, 12.21) is a remake of Niels Arden Oplev‘s 2009 Swedish-language film of the same title, and that both are based on the late Stieg Larsson‘s 2008 novel? Is it therefore likely that anyone will be surprised to read that Fincher’s film looks, plays and feels exactly like a remake, albeit one that’s costlier, punchier, gloomier and more vigorous?

Boiled down to basics, that’s what this film is — a highly efficient, A-grade, gripping-as-far-as-it-goes deja vu experience. It’s a bit darker and very well acted all around (especially in terms of one crucial performance), and more atmospherically noirish in an almost luxurious, Hollywood-comes-to-Sweden sort of way. But these are attributes of efficiency rather than vision or art. I mean, the territory had already been well mapped by the book and the ’09 film. What could Fincher be expected to do except give it a high-style topspin?

There’s nothing wrong with re-doing a recently made, highly successful foreign language film (which grossed over $100 million), but let’s call a spade a spade: this is primarily a cash-grab enterprise that didn’t really need to happen except for a desire on the part of the creative principals (Fincher, producer Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures) to make piles of money. Yes, that’s why 97% of all films are made, but you go to a Fincher film expecting that extra “something”, however you want to define that word, and Tattoo, for all its stimulations and satisfactions, doesn’t have that. Not as far as I could detect, at least.

Tattoo has a wonderfully haunting main-title sequence and a great score by Trent Reznor, okay, but it’s certainly no landmark Fincher film in the vein of The Social Network, Se7en, Fight Club or Zodiac. As far as I can tell it was an exercise, a job, something cool to do. And that’s okay. A home-run hitter will sometime hit a double or a sacrifice fly, and there’s no shame whatsoever in that. And Tattoo, Lord knows, is certainly a grabbier, more straight-shooting, less pretentious deal than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Is Tattoo well-made and reasonably absorbing in terms of suspense, thrills, performances and high-style brushstrokes? Yeah, it is. Is it a whole lot better than the Swedish original? You could make that argument and I wouldn’t put up a fight. But as a Fincher film it very nearly belongs in the company of The Game, Panic Room and even Alien 3.

Why did I use the word “nearly”? Because The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo delivers a major standout element in Rooney Mara‘s performance as Lisbeth Salander.

This is a culturally important role, for sure — a tough-but-wounded, leather-clad Gothy biker with a laptop, a brilliant analytical mind and a brusque, back-off attitude. Salander is easily the leading fictional female empowerment figure of the 21st Century, certainly to the millions of women who’ve read Larsson’s Tattoo books. And Mara, I feel, gives Salander a sadder and more vulnerable aura and a more emotionally readable quality than what Noomi Rapace delivered in the Swedish trilogy.

You might compare the two films down the road and say, “Nope, don’t see it…six of one, half-dozen of the other” but I know what I felt from Mara’s eyes, and there’s a lot going on inside her, I swear. Tremors and feints and glances and looks that say “stay away, I don’t want you near….wait, maybe I do.”

There’s enough in this performance, I feel, for Mara to be counted among the year’s Best Actress nominees. But I don’t know if that’s going to travel given the apparent decision on Fincher, Rudin and Sony’s part to not offer Dragon Tattoo as an award-calibre December release and to just put it out there as “a people’s movie.” They’re probably right as far as the film goes — it’s not a original-enough thing to really crank up the critics — but I’m afraid that Rooney’s performance might get thrown out with the bathwater. And that wouldn’t be right or fair. She’s got an exceptional inside-rumble going on.

I’ve just came back from Brad Bird and Tom Cruise”s Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol and it’s after midnight and I don’t have much energy left, I’m afraid, so I’ll have to run a review about how Dragon Tattoo plays on a scene-by-scene, jolt-by-jolt basis in a day or two. Here’s Justin Chang‘s Variety review, which is somewhat more enthusiastic than mine.