Rooney Mara stars as intense hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Perverse sex crimes form the visceral core of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but those hideous acts only take up a few minutes of screen time. The real story engine for David Fincher’s unflinching two-hour, 27-minute thriller is fueled by information: Who controls it, who owns it, what’s private, what’s public, how is it hidden, when does memory fail and hard copy triumph?

Movies for the past decade have tried and largely failed to overcome the near-comical lack of drama involved in showing the hero...

Adrian Lamo, left, walks with a soldier into a courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland, on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011, for a military hearing that will determine if Army Pfc. Bradley Manning should face court-martial for his alleged role in the WikiLeaks classified leaks case. Manning's online correspondent was Adrian Lamo, a former hacker, who gave the chat logs to authorities, leading to Manning's arrest in May 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning sat in the same room with the man who undid his life on Tuesday, when former hacker Adrian Lamo took the stand on the...