- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- OPENING: 03/19/2010
- STUDIO: Danish Filminstitute
- RUN TIME: 152m
- ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, IMDb
The Charge
Forty years ago Harriet Vanger vanished. It’s time to find out why – whatever the cost.
Opening Statement
Following with recent trend of thrillers, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo leaves The DaVinci Code and Bourne series of films in the dust. Instead of the usual string of hokey plot twists, director Niels Oplev delivers an intricate story with a tour-de-force performance by lead actress Noomi Rapace. With talk of an American remake already in the works, filmmakers will be hard pressed to improve on this Swedish thriller.
Facts of the Case
After being accused of libel, famed journalist Mikael Blomkvist steps out of public eye in the few months leading up to his prison term. Blomkvist catches the eye of financial tycoon Henrik Vanger, who hires computer hacker Lisbeth Salader to investigate Blomkvist. After finding no fault whatsoever, Vanger approaches Blomkvist with the hopes of finding his missing niece Harriet, who disappeared some forty years ago without a trace. Vanger suspects that she was murdered by another family member and Blomkvist accepts the job partially because of the significant sum of money presented, but also to escape his recently scrutinized career. With the help of Lisbeth, Blomkvist uncovers a sinister past spanning several generations of the family business. Lisbeth and Blomkvist also begin a relationship of their own, built on a foundation of trust and untold secrets.
The Evidence
Since the release of The Sixth Sense in 1999, audiences have come to expect at least one unimaginable twist in any thriller. Curveball endings are nothing new, but that particular ending worked so well that filmmakers have tried to cash in ever since, often giving us lamebrain endings so far out of left field that everything preceding that moment becomes a joke. Even Shyamalan himself has failed miserably to compete with his previous masterpiece. I entered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo expecting to have various twists thrown my way, in an attempt to win me over with something far fetched. Instead, director Niels Oplev steers clear of such gimmicks and tells an intricate story without being predictable. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is every bit as much a thriller as any recent Matt Damon film, but the absurdity has been replaced by real characters with real emotions.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the best selling book by Stieg Larsson, is a murder mystery of sorts. I say of sorts because while we follow Mikael in his quest to solve the case for Henrik, the story, on a deeper level, is about Mikael’s relationship with Lisbeth. We know very little about 24-year old Lisbeth, but we do know that the government requires her to have a guardian because of past issues. The dragon tattoo covering her entire back and numerous facial piercings give us the sense that this little spitfire has been through it all; what it is exactly, we don’t know and won’t find out. This is the way Lisbeth wants it and for a culture that has become used to having every minute detail spelled out (e.g. Lost, Heroes), this could prove frustrating. If we don’t know something, then we have to assume that the author and director are intentionally not telling us. If you aren’t down with this type of storytelling, rest assured that you aren’t the only one that takes issue. The lack of disclosure is also troubling to Mikael as well, since he wants to gain a deeper understanding to the person he is involved with. Too bad.
Underneath the layers of black eyeliner and leather jacket is a performance by Noomi Rapace that will be hard to touch by any American who takes on the role. To my memory, Rapace didn’t crack a smile through the entire film. This girl is pissed and it takes everything within her not to unleash her anger on everyone who mistreats her. This is why Lisbeth’s affection for Mikael is so believable, because he is the only authority figure in her life who hasn’t abused her in one way or another. It is of no consequence that the Swedish book’s original title was Men Who Hate Women. With that title, a moviegoer might expect to witness much abuse within the film, but the puffier title The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo makes no allusion to that. Those with a weak stomach should be warned as we witness many unnerving photographic images and one brutal rape scene in which the sound is thankfully removed halfway through. Rapace’s screams were utterly convincing and that situation only fueled the fire of hate burning inside Lisbeth’s character.
This whodunit has some of the things we have come to expect in recent thrillers, but at the same time relies on the more classic methods of clue-finding techniques. Lisbeth feels almost naked without her Macbook Pro to help research any leads, using Google and various code breakers to get protected files. Mikael, on the other hand, has no problem sneaking into a house to search for clues the old-fashioned way. She is the ying to his yang. Apart, they cannot solve the case, but together, they have the means to discover the history behind Harriet’s disappearance. As with any thriller, the more Mikael and Lisbeth learn, the more they realize they have uncovered a multi-layered secret. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo pulls this off in a way that isn’t silly. We don’t have Tom Hanks deciphering a cylindrical device to take us to the next clue. We have the natural unraveling of a mystery in a very logical way. Larrson deserves much credit for creating an interesting story where opposites really do attract.
The film is a whopping 152 minutes, which is 28 minutes shorter than the Swedish version. Still, the film doesn’t drag and thankfully leads to a gratifying ending for both the characters and the viewers. For those who don’t mind reading subtitles on a film with a long running time, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely worth a viewing. Because of the scene previously discussed, this film is not rated, probably because distributors knew that an NC-17 rating would be a box office deterrent for many.
Closing Statement
Outstanding performances and solid source material give us one of the better films of the year. This dark tale is not for the sheltered, as one brutal scene in particular will make you especially uncomfortable.
The Verdict
8/10
5 comments ↓
This sounds good. Can’t wait to check it out. Love thrillers…subtitles, so what?
A good review Daniel. But I’m afraid I disagree with your assessment. This is no more than a mediocre adaptation at best.
I have read all three of the Stieg Larsson books and thought them excellent thrillers. The first book is the weakest of the three though, as it has to provide the ‘set-up’ for the trilogy, while the middle section of the book, which is devoted to much sifting through archives, old documents and photos and tracking down and interviewing potential eye-witnesses, makes for very poor cinematic material.
So I went into the film knowing that the only surprise would be how the filmakers dealt with
the material and how they were going to compress the book’s length into something manageable.
I had no problems with the handling of e.g. the rape scene. Its probably more graphic than any US remake will be. But I found the whole film curiously inert – a thriller without many thrills in fact.
That’s a problem of the storytelling, the actors and Niels Arden Oplev’s direction.
Not surprisingly, the writers have had to take the axe to Stieg Larsson’s book. But in doing so, they have lost much of what made it so engrossing in the first place – namely the finely drawn characters and their relationships and a strong sense of place (Sweden).
The finished film did not strike me as being particularly Swedish while too many of the cast are bland, giving performances that tend towards stolid. In the books Blomkvist is something of a ladies man (I think at one point he has four different relationships going at the same time).The guy playing Mikael Blomkvist in the film has had a charisma by-pass. And on the basis of this outing, the trilogy needs a Director with a stronger visual and dynamic sense than Oplev if it is going to really deliver the goods in the sequels.
In summary, I think people who enjoyed the books (surely the main audience?) are going to be rather underwhelmed by this adaptation. It is competent but lacks that certain ‘something’ that separates an okay film from a good one.
Manilaman,
Thanks so much for the feedback. I haven’t read the books, so I can only write on my impression of the film itself. I do look forward to seeing the others if they are turned into films.
Daniel
i have seen this film and its brillant.i don’t mind
subtittles at all and is a very good movie.and I did not like da vinci code at all.thought it was boring.this is like a sweedish hitchcock.very well made
I certainly agree with Manilaman’s comment.
I have read the trilogy books and saw the movie after that.
There are many missing links in the movie.
The character and the chemistry seems blur in the movie.
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