Thoughts about that girl with the dragon tattoo

I just got around recently to reading Stieg Larsson's superb mystery novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and am now anxious to see the film version before it leaves the Magnolia. Of course the current film is a Swedish product and by now most film fans know an American version is in the works, to be adapted by Steve Zaillian and directed by David Fincher.

So far no actors have signed contracts to appear in the film but speculation about who would portray journalist Mikael Blomqvist and hacker (and title character) Lisbeth Salander has run rampant, especially since it is expected the actors who sign would have to agree to do all the film versions of Larsson's trilogy. I always thought Kristen Stewart possessed exactly the right amount of punk sensibility to play Salander and Peter Sarsgaard had just the right amount of bookish charm, vulnerability and earnestness to play Blomqvist. The one drawback to Sarsgaard was that he recently was featured in a film in which he beds a much younger woman, but that thought was nullified when folks started mentioning that Carey Mulligan was interested in the role of Salander.

Most of the talk I heard about who actually might star as Blomqvist focused on Brad Pitt, a choice that gave some of my contemporaries far more heartburn than it did me. But now I hear that talks are underway with Daniel Craig, who would be absolutely perfect if he wasn't so associated with playing James Bond. Blomqvist is simply not as heroic a character as Bond or many of the other characters Craig has played. In the scene in the book where Blomqvist is about to be killed in the basement "chamber of horrors," he really does fear for his life. In a similar scene in Casino Royale, the one in which Bond is bound naked in a chair, I never really felt Craig was anything but stoic about his fate, perhaps because he and the rest of the civilized world knew no lasting harm was ever going to befall James Bond.

But the talk about Daniel Craig made me think of someone who would really be perfect for the part -- Michael Kelly. If you don't know of whom I referring, take a look at this.