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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO When retired corporate titan Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) opens a birthday gift from an anonymous sender, just like the ones he’s been receiving every year, he weeps at the pressed flowers, the annual reminder that he used to receive such a present from his beloved niece Harriet—but she has been missing for almost 40 years. At the same time, investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is mired in the losing end of a libel trial against another, younger corporate titan due to mysteriously bum tips from a Deep Throat source. The court case will send him to jail and almost bankrupt his magazine. Young computer hacker supreme Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is hired by a security firm to check out the reporter for Vanger. Her personal life is as mysterious as her multiple tattoos (besides that titular dragon), piercings, severe punk haircut, and silence, let alone her sadistic guardian Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson). (Warning: the film’s violence is quite graphic, whether against innocent victims or double-backed onto the perpetrators.) Salander’s research convinces Vanger to make Blomkvist an offer he can’t financially refuse for himself or his magazine—to find out what happened to Vanger’s niece decades ago. Even the very independent, anti-social Salander can’t resist the mystery as she continues hacking the journalist’s computer and picking up overlooked clues (mostly credible) and Blomkvist himself (less realistic, though Nyqvist has a rumpled, romantic appeal as a middle-aged man on a mission). Based on the world-wide best-selling Swedish novel by the late Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the first in his “Millennium Trilogy,” all of which are being turned into films with the same smoldering lead actress, as well as a reported Hollywood remake. While the novel is full of fan appreciation for contemporary mystery writers (Blomkvist escapes the mounting tension by reading such novelists as Sue Grafton and Val McDermid), director Niels Arden Oplev includes many tributes to movie mysteries and thrillers. Film fans will enjoy catching the references, starting with the very Big Sleep-like premise of a rich old guy in an isolated mansion hiring a PI to find his wayward ward. Sexy Salander is a horribly abused vehicle for revenge like Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita; biblical clues that solve multiple murders parallel the Seven Deadly Sins in David Fincher’s Se7en; the visually exciting search through old photographs of Harriet heavily tips to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, while borrowing from the style of Brian De Palma’s Blow Out; the despicable family of suspects gathers for a showdown in the drawing room like in every Agatha Christie adaptation, but on an island that particularly recalls the one in René Clair’s And Then There Were None. And unrepentant Nazi relatives seem straight out of John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man. (While this angle could border on a violent stereotype, the late Larsson’s day job was researching and condemning fascist groups.) Oplev barrels beyond a pastiche of these classics by paring down a very exposition-heavy novel into a very visual thriller that doles out the revelations for maximum suspense. (The necessary family tree with photographs frequently flashes on screen, more easily than the reader can refer to). Restless camera work by cinematographers Eric Kress and Jens Fischer is breathlessly edited by Anne Osterud and Jannus Billeskov Jansen, intercutting the montages of Blomkvist’s and Salander’s research, allowing the audience to piece together the clues of all the strands. Unfortunately, the mysteries wrap up with the usual exposition by the threatening villain yielding a weapon (albeit an originally gruesome one), but that was also the case in Guillaume Canet’s adaptation of the best-selling Tell No One, which went on to art-house success. The final
puzzle pieces of corporate scandal and payback are a bit confusing to
follow just from the film alone. While the denouement feels like an
awkward set up for part two of the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With
Fire, Dragon Tattoo is definitely intriguing enough to
make the audience look forward to seeing this girl strike again.
Nora Lee Mandel
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