Let's cut to the crucial question: How is the new girl in David Fincher's version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"? She's fine, thank you very much. That is to say, Rooney Mara looks just as bizarre as Noomi Rapace did in the role of Lisbeth Salander, the poster girl for punk and spunk in the Swedish-language trilogy. And she cuts just as striking a figure riding a motorcycle, surfing the web or taking and giving terrible punishment. But there's a crucial difference. Lisbeth 1 was black-light incandescence, burning with focused anger. Lisbeth 2 is recessive, haunted, sometimes bummed and occasionally blank but clearly alienated from the vile world in which Lisbeth 1 fiercely claimed her place. That may leave fans of the original feeling alienated too, not only from Lisbeth but from the spectacle of a remake that has much to recommend it—high-end craftsmanship, a singular heroine, a labyrinthine mystery, an intriguing milieu—yet lacks a vital spark.

Fans of the original are not, to be sure, the remake's main target audience. Americans don't turn out in massive numbers for foreign-language films, even when they're as popular as this one was. So there's plenty of pent-up curiosity about Lisbeth, one of the most original figures in movie history, as well as standing demand for well-made thrillers, of which this is one. (Steven Zaillian adapted the screenplay from the Stieg Larsson novel. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did the powerful score.)

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is a sharp departure from Mr. Fincher's previous film, "The Social Network," in the preface of which Ms. Mara's Erica fought a spirited verbal duel with Jesse Eisenberg's Mark. The new film's plot centers on an antisocial network, a Swedish family with a history of Fascist leanings that holds the secret to the fate of a young woman who disappeared 40 years ago. Daniel Craig is Mikael Blomkvist, the disgraced journalist who teams up with Lisbeth to investigate the extremely cold case, and uncovers more corruption than either of them bargained for. A cool actor turned chilly in the Scandinavian winter, Mr. Craig nonetheless finds welcome humor in Mikael's impassive affect. Christopher Plummer is the family's smoothly expansive plutocrat. Stellan Skarsgård puts another construction on smoothness as one of its least savory members.

Yet the film is no departure at all from such earlier Fincher films as "Seven" and "Zodiac," since it involves, as they did, acts of ghastly violence committed under grisly circumstances. Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography does lustrous variations on the darkness the director favors; Stockholm glitters in nighttime exteriors, and its subway shines in a spectacular spasm of action involving a backpack. One script change warrants discussion—I won't discuss it because I won't divulge it—but most of the film follows the original, sometimes shot for shot. It's certainly worth seeing if you missed the original. If you saw it, however, there's no way of unseeing it, and nothing in the new one to top it.