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...movie, helmed by Danish TV director Niels Arden Oplev, is a much-streamlined version of Larsson's book. (It's also the first of a franchise; cinematic adaptations of Larsson's two sequels were also released in Europe last year.) The basics are there: a disgraced journalist named Mikael Blomkvist (played just right by Swedish star Michael Nyqvist) is hired by an elderly industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), to investigate the disappearance of his 16-year old niece Harriet 40 years ago on a remote island. Henrik believes Harriet was killed by a member of her large and thoroughly...
...half hours long, but it whisks along in a business-like way, not sparing a minute for red herrings. The only times it slows down are during a couple of grisly, graphic moments involving rape and torture - scenes that are hard to endure, even if readers of the book know they're coming. The supporting characters are less memorable on screen than on the page; Taube's Henrik in particular sadly doesn't make much of an impression, while Lena Endre is an outright weak choice to play Blomkvist's editor Erika Berger. But if Dragon Tattoo gives short shrift...
...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...
...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 because Nyqvist could easily handle the nuance...
...animal suicide and many others - that of a canvasback duck, a cat, pelicans, scorpions - but intentionally doesn't address the issue of whether these animals or any others are technically capable of ending their own lives. Thomas Joiner, a Florida State University psychologist, does take that stand. His new book, Myths About Suicide, links the suicidal tendencies of living creatures. "Across nature there seems to be the same kind of calculation," says Joiner. "Is my death worth more than my life? Suicides of all kinds involve this calculation, from bacteria and insects to conventional suicide deaths and even suicide terrorists...