Word: blomkvist
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Without a trace, sixteen-year-old Harriet Vanger vanishes from the island that houses her influential family. Her disappearance continues to haunt her family for forty years, so an old and distraught Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) calls the once-renowned journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nygvist), to investigate the decades-old mystery...
...film is not, however, completely flawless. At times, the movie focuses so keenly on character development that it detracts somewhat from the story line. This development is essential to discerning why Lisbeth and Blomkvist, two extremely lost people, make the kind of desperate and dangerous decisions that they do. Larsson’s story is more eloquently written than the pared script. This ultimately is no fault of the movie, however, as that kind of story-telling simply cannot be delivered without several more hours of film...
...read the book, you can't help comparing and contrasting both versions constantly. Oplev's movie whisks key characters right out of the plot, either by death or omission. Much of the journalistic intrigue is gone (sadly, since presumably this was an element precious to Larsson, who like Blomkvist was a financial journalist before his death in 2004.) The changes may jar those viewers well-versed in Larsson's work, but because of them Oplev is able to tease more thrills out of the material than they might expect. Blomkvist twice stumbles unwittingly into suspenseful situations involving spooky houses...
...biggest thrill though is Salander, feminist icon to some, disturbed vigilante to others, who matters more on the screen than she did on the page, far more than her male co-star. This Lisbeth is proactive. She inserts herself into Blomkvist's detective work before she's asked. Where you might expect a movie to also make her sassier, this one makes her, if anything, angrier, more furtive, more darkly funny. Shorn of the competing love interests Larsson gave him in the book, Blomkvist only has eyes for Lisbeth now, which makes him more likeable, but less interesting - a shame...
...hard to blame Blomkvist for being smitten though. Rapace has some Spanish heritage mixed in with her Swedish, and her eyes are dark, almost black. Her nose is strong, her cheekbones prominent. As with the written Salander, she's inexplicably attractive. I finished Larsson's novel with the uncomfortable sense it used a good mystery as an excuse to dwell on sadism and perversity - an aspect only exacerbated on screen. I thought I'd had quite enough but Rapace's quietly simmering performance made me curious about what The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo does next...