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 Noomi Rapace in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"
Movie Reviews
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
How does a filmmaker adapt Stieg Larsson's smashing international hit "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," a thriller that deals with religious cults, the lasting influence of Nazism in Sweden, financial shenanigans and sadism, among other shockers?
Not Rated
(2010)
Publication Date Mar. 19, 2010
Very, very skillfully. Director Niels Arden Oplev sticks close to Larsson's troubling story, starting with the opening scene in which, on his 82nd birthday, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), the aging doyen of a giant industrial complex, opens an anonymous package containing a pressed flower. Just as he has on every birthday since his beloved niece Harriet disappeared 40 years earlier. Vanger hires disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist) to make one last attempt to find the girl. Mikael is joined in his quest by the punkish Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the "girl with the dragon tattoo." She and Mikael use not only modern technology but also old-fashioned inductive reasoning and meticulous examination of evidence: old photographs, receipts, diaries and the like.†The results of their search are shocking but never implausible. Though Mikael is actually the central character, Lisbeth is the most mesmerizing. Profoundly damaged (we don't know how or when), angry, and a computer and hacking genius who is willing to employ violence, she's totally indifferent to social norms or other people's judgments. Of course, director Oplev and screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg have to omit some characters and scenes (and sexual liaisons), but never so as to confuse the viewer. The shocking story of the corruption of Sweden's industrial class, of its legal and child welfare systems, and of how women are damaged by men (Larsson's original title was "Men Who Hate Women") retains all the novel's suspense. It also retains the novel's disturbing scenes of sadism. Author Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004, at age 50. He never saw the publication of "Girl" or its two sequels, both of which have already been made into films in Sweden. Last year, Larsson was the world's second-best-selling author, and the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was Europe's highest-grossing film. It's easy to understand why. Not rated. 2 hours, 32 minutes. - Renata Polt
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