Recent Release Reviewed: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Haber, Sven-Bertil Taube
Screenplay: Nikolaj Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg, based on the novel by Stieg Larsson
Director: Niels Arden Oplev

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) is contacted by old, incredibly wealthy industry tycoon Henrik Vanger (Taube). Henrik wants to find out what happened to his beloved niece Harriet, who disappeared 40 years ago, and has narrowed down the suspects to the members his family, many of whom have ties to Nazi groups. As Blomkvist relocates to the small village of Hedeby, where the Vangers live in wealthy isolation, troubled computer hacker and loner Lisbeth Salander (Rapace) gets wind of the investigation and decides to get involved.

The first of three Swedish films based on the incredibly popular Millennium trilogy gets things off to a very good start. The tragic story of Stieg Larsson, who died before the publication of the books, is movie-material itself, but The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo crams enough intrigue, murder, and violence to fill its two-and-a-half hour running time.

Almost inevitably, the fact that the film is in a foreign language has placed it in the arthouse arena. While it is beautifully shot and determined to go at its own pace, it's also very much a dark, violent, thriller reminiscent of Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs. It's a murder mystery based around a rich reclusive family, the main character is a journalist, there are red herrings and sudden shocking violence. The comparison to these 1990s genre films isn't supposed to be detrimental. In fact, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is probably as close as any film's come to that quality since.

Aside from its inherent Swedish-ness (Yes, that's a thing), three things really set this film apart from the many, many other films crowding the genre. The treatment of misogyny and violence against women, the two leading actors, and the character of Lisbeth Salander. The Swedish title translates as Men Who Hate Women, and that is accurate, to put it lightly. Of course, we know that victims of serial killers are traditionally women, but the film is uncommonly unflinching in it's depiction of the violence. These scenes are graphic, brutal and hard to watch. This ties in closely with Lisbeth Salander, who is clearly, by quite some way, the best thing that the film, and the book, has going for it. Excellently played by Noomi Rapace, Salander is a tattoed, pierced, Goth loner who has been abused by the system which has kept control of her since events in her youth. As the film starts she is placed under the care of a new guardian who clearly falls into the title's category. Lisbeth fights back, and keeps fighting throughout the whole of the film.

Rapace gives a very deft peformance. Tough yet vulnerable, she also shows a keen grasp of light comedy in her scenes with Michael Nyqvist, who also does excellent work in the role of Blomqvist. A Hollywood remake would presumably soften Lisbeth's rough edges, and either make Blomqvist about ten or fifteen years younger, or cast someone more conventionally attractive than Nyqvist, who resembles a slightly rounder Mathieu Almaric. Both actors deserve the attention they've been getting. The rest of the cast give very good performances, and special mention must go to Peter Andersson as Lisbeth's repulsive guardian.

Director Niels Arden Oplev does very well creating the oppressive atmosphere of the Vanger family compound, and he and the writers should be commended for the work they did compressing the novel, which was occasionally guilty of padding, into a film that, although perhaps a little long, suffers from few dead patches. Oplev has made a gripping, tense thriller that deserves an audience beyond the arthouse.

7.5/10