In 1966, 16-year old Harriet Vanger disappeared without a trace from a family gathering on the island owned by the powerful Vanger family. Nearly 40 years later, disgraced magazine journalist Mikael Blomqvist is contacted by Harriet's uncle, powerful industrialist Henrik Vanger, who asks him to write the history of the Vanger family and find out what happened to Harriet. Joining forces with troubled young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, Mikael starts to delve into the past of the Vanger family � and unearths a history more sinister and violent than he could ever have imagined.

Presented in 1080p utilizing the AVC codec (at an average bitrate of 25Mbps), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo offers a decent visual presentation that rarely disappoints. Fine object detail never quite reaches the heights found on a glossy modern day production, but aside from subtle drops in clarity (attributed to the use of soft-focus in the source material) during a handful of scenes, I remained pleased with the resolution boost within the high-definition image. Moving on to the color spectrum, you'll notice an overall lack of richness in the stylistic cinematography by Jens Fischer and Eric Kress, who steep a large portion of the film in dreary, overcast hues. This shouldn't be viewed as a weakness in the Blu-ray presentation, since it adds to the heavy nature of the subject matter, but those looking for extensive color vibrancy should set realistic expectations from the outset. On the positive side, black level depth coupled with strong contrast differentiation resist a loss of shadow detail, lending an overall consistency to the image that only falters in a handful of shots (allowing for slight drops in contrast delineation).

Taken as a whole, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo offers a visual presentation that never becomes a distraction or detriment to the film, but can't compare with the best Blu-ray has to offer.