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[Stefancos]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

CONTAINS SPOILERS!



A classic Agatha Christie murder mystery in some ways. O murdered girl, no body, an isolated island, so no outsiders could have been responsible. We have seen this before in many a film.

It's appeal lies in the execution and the characters.
Lisbeth Salander has slowly gathered a huge fanbase after her first appearance in Stieg Larson's novel Men Who Hate Women.
I haven't read the book, nor have I seen the original Swedish films starring Noomi Rapace.
Rooney Mara gives a fearless performance of a disturbed and disturbing your woman who has probably gone through hell throughout here life. Looking like a goth, filled with tattoo's and piercings, but probably not even really fitting in with the "weirdo" set.

In a few intense sequences between her and her state appointed caretaker she goes from abused victim to a women scorned and getting her own back.
Yorick van Wageningen is disturbingly loathsome as Nils Bjurman. who replaced Dr. Chilton from Silence Of The Lambs as the most disliked character in a movie involving a serial killer. The rape scene is brutal, her revenge even more so.
Mara manages to make us care about a character who is very unsociable. Most of the time she looks away when talking to people, avoids physical contact, acts rude and has little social skills.
the films ends with a scene were Mikael Blomkvist breaks her heart. He doesn't know he does it. Doesn't even know she's there. But you side with Lisbeth.

Daniel Craig has not had the best of luck picking films since his big break in Casino Royale. Here he made the right choice. He's very effective as a counterpoint to Lisbeth. A "normal" reporter, disgraced because of an error in judgement.
Unlike Craig's Bond he doesn't look like he's be very good in a fight, has some scares and often looks a bit out of his depth.
He and Lisbeth start a sexual relationship. Which she initiates. (he's really out of his depth here)
At the end of the film he is taken prisoner, and she is the one who saves him in the nick of time.

The rest of the cast is all very good. Actors like Berkoff, Skarsgård, Plummer all manage to appear friendly, while suggesting something in the background. Some adopt Swedisc accents, some do not (Daniel Craig doesn't). Stellan Skarsgård, while from Sweden actually avoids the cliché accent.

In a film like this mood is important. The cinemaphotography is superb, dark, moody, but never too dark. Sweden looks cold, and forbidding. The editing is good, but occasionally too fast (the Bond-like title sequence for instance is completely unintelligible).

The music...it's there. I think there's quite a lot of it. Most of it textural synth stuff. I did not really notice it much. I guess it did its job... Not offensive enough for me to hate, not good enough for me to pay any attention to it.

Good film!

Now I wanna see the Swedish ones.

***1/2 out of ****

[Pasi Tiitinen]

The first one of the Swedish films is great, the other two not so much.