The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (unrated)
Country: Sweden
This film is currently playing in Orange County at Edwards University Town Center 6 in Irvine.
In this Swedish film, a disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is employed by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), a member of a powerful yet dysfunctional Vanger clan, to locate and uncover the fate of his niece who disappeared 40 years ago, whom Henrik believes to be dead. Mikael teams up with a tattooed and troubled but resourceful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) to find her, which leads them to dark family secrets and uncovering a series of bizarre murders involving women.
There are those films that you know that are well-made, powerful, and even brilliant, yet not particularly the type you’d recommend to casual movie-goers that you know. This is such a film. Certainly, with the harsh subject matter regarding the abuse, murder, and rape involving women, this film is recommended more towards a mature audience who can stomach that kind of stuff. At the same time, the film isn’t exploitative, but harsh, brutal things do happen to our heroine—yet the film has a bit of a feminist bent. It’s noteworthy that this film was originally titled Men Who Hate Women in non-English speaking countries. The film is based on a novel, an international bestseller, one of a trilogy that Stieg Larsson completed before his untimely death at 44 in 2004.
What is surprising for this mystery thriller is the attention to the characters. The mystery plot ultimately serves as a way for the audience to uncover the past and the psychology of the main characters than the subject they’re investigating, not unlike, let’s say, Silence of the Lambs.
Noomi Rapace is compelling as the edgy, resourceful 24-year-old computer hacker named Lisbeth, a thin, fierce, damaged goth-girl with body piercings and tattoos. She is emotionally walled-off, not helped by her background and the awful men in her life. She has a photographic memory and is brilliant on the computer. Her involvement with the case uncovers some dark aspects of her past. She is teamed up with Mikael, a sympathetic 40-something journalist. Michael Nyqvist brings a lot of humanity to Mikael, making him one of the more likeable and intelligent male characters in the film. Certainly, as characters go, the ever-so-intense Lisbeth tends to overshadow the more passive Mikael, yet they seem to work efficiently well together—the relationship they develop is certainly an unusual one.
The tight direction of Niels Arden Oplev is first rate. The film’s frosty mood remains serious throughout, the film’s pace is brisk enough despite the running time, and the film is always intriguing. It is a dark world that these characters inhabit (perhaps not too far from real life), but the main characters are sympathetically portrayed. The cinematography is excellent, making use of muted, cold colors, expressing a chilly, unfriendly world.
The story unfolds logically with various clues leading to other clues, with old photographs, technology, and the internet playing a big part. As mentioned, however, the real story is about the mysteries of the main characters themselves.
Few Hollywood thrillers tend to be as cold and stark as this film (although ones that are tend to be exploitative). One can easily find oneself rooting for these characters. The main characters have issues, are flawed, aren’t macho, but very human. They bleed, and horrific things can and do happen to them. It’s not a happy film. But, it is a serious one. And, a strong one. I give this film *** out of **** stars.
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