Niels Arden Oplev

Audience Q&As at a film festival can be a mixed bag. At the World Premiere screening for Tuesday night’s Algren, a man waved at Director Michael Caplan, who recognized the man from a coffee shop earlier in the day. During the Q&A for Red Army, Director Gabe Polsky charmingly asked his grandmother (correction: Babushka), in …

Oplev’s vesion hesitates not a second in taking the same characters and the same plot and rewiring them, switching the focus from the investigation to central relationship. Fincher’s film is an adaptation that both on page and on-screen is a loyal and loving tribute to the book, a rarity with such efforts. The term remake, perversely, has never been more appropriate.