I found myself craving David Fincher movies this week. Maybe it’s the dreary weather we’re currently having in my part of Canada, or maybe I’m in a foul mood, but I felt a desperate need to watch his movies about perverts, psychopaths, serial killers, and lunatics with zero regard for anybody other than themselves.
I haven’t watched this in at least 11 years. I don’t remember the last time I saw it; it was before I was married. My wife, understandably, has no interest in watching the events of this film. I can’t say I blame her. The scenes in question are upsetting, for lack of a better word.
This film feels three or four movies long because Fincher is stitching together three or four films. It’s clear he is interested in solving Harriet’s murder, but I’m not sure he’s interested in the film’s other mysteries. He takes great delight in (extremely satisfying) B‑roll of our leads working on the case, digging through old newspaper records and scanned images. But outside of that mystery, I’m not sure Fincher is interested in most of this. He films each scene with the attention for detail he is renowned for, but seems unable to find the connective tissue to bring it all together.
And yet, despite that, Fincher puts in so much effort that the individual pieces are all fantastic. Rooney Mara is astounding, even if she feels thinly drawn. Christopher Plummer sells every moment of his performance. In a late scene when he breaks down in tears, I believe every second of it. Daniel Craig is excellent, and at the time, I remember feeling like he was really displaying his prowess beyond Bond.
The costume design? Amazing stuff. Fincher’s sweaters are A+. Mara’s outfits are incredible. Production design? Out of the park. And the feeling of investigative reporting is aces here.
It just never comes together.
This has nothing to do with the movie, but watching this in 2026, I loved his shots of what is now vintage OS X and the original MacBook Pros circa 2011. Fincher kept shooting the laptops like he was trying to sell them. The profile shots with all those ports! USB A, Firewire, Displayport, HDMI (of course), and even ethernet! It looked so useful. I say that as I type this on a 2025 M4 MacBook Pro connected to a TS5+ Thunderbolt whatever thingymajig just so I can get the ethernet port and several USB ports back.
There’s this scene shortly after Mara and Craig finally start working together, where Daniel Craig wants to show Mara something on his laptop. He means to open a group of photographs in Finder. Ostensibly, this window is already open. But he fumbles around multiple maximized windows in OS X, muttering “where the f*** is it” under his breath, as he closes multiple windows and programs. The camera cuts to a medium shot: We are looking head on at Craig and Mara, positioned behind the laptop. Mara sits at the laptop. Craig is awkwardlty overtop of her, arms uncomfortably spooled around her so he can reach the trackpad, clicking about, eyes darting left and right.
And in this moment, Mara does this eye roll thing. It’s not quite an eye roll, but it’s more than a grimace. It looks like part of her soul is recoiling into her body. In this one moment, it is clear she has lost some respect for Craig’s character. She desperately wants to scream at him about learning how to use a computer, because she is not impressed by his technological illiteracy.
First, I felt incredibly seen by this moment.
But secondly, this film is chock full of these little moments. Moments like this are fantastic. Fincher clearly has a way of getting these incredible, subtle performances from his thespians. But as a whole, it never comes together, and this movie feels so long that I’ve seen marriages reach their conclusion more quickly.