A sexy Murder Mystery with an extremely dark coat of paint about it; The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a Swedish crime story directed by Niels Arden Oplev and based on a novel by the same name. On the surface it is a story about a wealthy old man who hires a famous journalist to investigate his missing family member of 40 years – a beautiful young woman by the name of Harriet Vanger. What the movie really is about however is rape, abuse and the strong women that manage to combat those evil men in their lives that perpetuate this horror. If you are squeamish about seeing violent rape on film, or seeing women punched in the mouth and gagged – I would stay clear of this version. For me the grittiness of these scenes made the impact of the crimes more realistic and I found myself really respecting the director for the “direction” that he took.
If there is anything I can say that I enjoy about Swedish films as opposed to the American adaptations, it’s the willingness to let the story play out slowly without needing to cram everything within 30 minutes.
The story starts with a little background on our journalist protagonist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and then we meet the girl who is the title: the ultra gothic Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace). Without giving anything away you immediately can tell that there is a whole volume of history about Lisbeth, She wlks with confidence, dies her hair jet black, has piercings, tattoos, dresses like a boy and carries a constant attitude. Her entire look reads as “backoff” but beyond the uniform she’s a brilliant computer hacker with a knack for puzzles and figuring things out. These two are shown separately in there respective lives, until the investigation into Harriet brings them both together.
The casting is brilliant, Noomi Rapace is beautiful but extremely normal at the same time. It’s a great fit as we see girls who look like her version of Lisbeth every day; she isn’t too Hollywood, or a model made ugly for the sake of the movie, she looks the way a Lisbeth would look if the character were a real person. She conveyed enough through her gestures that having to watch this subtitled showed how wonderful an actress she really was – this became evident to me as an English speaking viewer being that I felt like I knew her better thn anyone else by the time it all ended. The realism in casting goes for Blomkvist as well whose rough, pock-filled face looked chubby and old, making him every bit the part of a seasoned journalist. Add in the beautiful cinematography of the Swedish countryside and you cannot help but become immersed into the story.
I will say that the script wasn’t exactly perfect for those keeping count – people who read the books I will warn that many liberties were supposedly taken for this film’s adaption. Still, as someone who hasn’t read the books, I will say that whatever liberties were taken worked well for me. The pacing was nice and slow, there were no super humans (though Lisbeth is a bit too badass to be true) and for the most part the level of “convenience” with the investigtion was not enough to annoy me. The movie does have it’s moments however when you wonder at what point it is trying to make but I loved the historical aspect of it all and the choice of such a wicked premise to cast a story on.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has some extremely graphic scenes and I warn you that watching it with the expectation of PG13 censorship will only scar you in the end. It more than earns it’s R-rating but if you can stomach it, I would say check it out before seeing the upcoming American version (let’s hope it doesn’t become another Let Me In).
I have been talking about the realism and the beauty of TGWTDT but the score is probably what stands out the most as memorable. Sure it’s the standard sound of this type of film (think Silence of The Lambs, 8MM…) but it complements the movie extremely well. Having watched it and reflecting on it all, the 3 highlights were the broken and mysterious Lisbeth, the way it ended and the soundtrack. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo should be available on Netflix in the Foreign section. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.
Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.
