I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but I finally watched this movie.  The American remake is going to have a difficult road to follow.  I can’t see any actress other than Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.  She inhabits the role with everything she’s got, she becomes her.  Her performance is better than the entire movie, she dominates it much as the character dominated the original book.  When Rapace isn’t on the screen, you want her back.  Not that the rest of the movie is bad, it’s just better when she’s there.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo begins with the disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) standing accused of libel against the powerful  Hans-Erik Wennerström.  It seems Blomkvist’s sources were less than credible.  While he is suffering through the trial, lawyer Dirch Frode has hired Milton Security to do some investigating into Blomkvist’s life and background.  Frode’s client, Henrik Vanger, a wealthy industrialist, wants to hire Blomkvist for a special assignment.  It’s hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander who does the research on Mikael Blomkvist.

Having been found guilty, Blomkvist is set to go to jail in six months.  Not long after his sentencing, Blomkvist is approached by Dirch Frode to meet with Vanger.  The elderly Vanger lives on the little island town of Hedebey, which only has the one bridge to enter or exit the island.  Henrik Vanger asks Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his beloved niece, Harriet.  Harriet went missing from the island forty years earlier, and Vanger believes that she was murdered, though her body was never found.  He also believes that one of the greedy, cutthroat, members of his own family is the killer. 

The Vanger family itself is a rogues gallery; they seem to hate each other as much as they hate Blomkvist for snooping into the family’s history.  How Henrik is so nice and human is a miracle; hate is quite possibly in the family blood- Henrik’s three brothers were Nazis.  But Henrik’s hate has been channeled into identifying Harriet’s killer; a passion fueled by the fact that he receives a framed flower in the mail from some corner of the globe every year on Harriet’s birthday.  It’s that salt in the wound that drives him on.


Lisbeth Salander, having developed a fascination with Blomkvist, observes his investigation from afar.  Using her highly developed hacker skills and computer knowledge, she reads through Blomkvist’s information on his computer.  It’s when Blomkvist becomes baffled by a code in Harriet’s old journal that Lisbeth can’t keep from sending Mikael the solution.  Blomkvist then tracks Lisbeth down and enlists her help in trying to solve the mystery of Harriet.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is not always easy to watch.  There is a rape scene that is very disturbing, but it isn’t used to gain sympathy for the characters, or to gain our support.  Long before that scene, we are already invested, and involved, with Salander and Blomkvist.  It’s easy to point out what Rapace does with her character, but I think Nyqvist deserves some recognition, too.  Yes, Salander is an unlikely hero, but so is Mikael Blomkvist.  He’s rather plain, rather ordinary, and I think he’s more interesting here than in the books.  Of course the movie Salander is nothing compared to the literary Salander, but the movie Salander still has no equal.

This is a great adaptation of the book, yet it somehow feels too succinct.  It still doesn’t feel complete, like when you’ve finished putting a model together and still have some pieces left over:  it still works, but it’s not all in there.  Maybe having read the book before seeing the movie diminished the appeal for me.  I’m still grateful I have it, though.

4 out of 5
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