[rating=2]
Hedeby Island, Sweden. Henrik Vanger, the venerable head of the powerful Vanger dynasty, opens a parcel from Hong Kong. The contents, a neatly pressed flower, floor the old man as surely as if a mugger kicked him in the guts. A beautiful blond peers down upon the distraught Henrik, enigmatic and silent. A lover? Relative? His daughter?
Investigative Journalist Mikael Blomkvist loses a bitter libel case against a seemingly corrupt industrialist, Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. The problem is that the accusations of arms dealing, drug running and fraud just won’t stick. Resigned to incarceration Blomkvist toasts his imminent prison sentence with his fellow journalists at the left wing magazine he writes for, Millennium.
Waiting for his sentence to start, Blomkvist is offered an intriguing job proposition: solve the forty-year mystery of the disappearance of Henrik Vanger’s beloved niece Harriet. This isn’t going to be a walk in the snow as Henrik points to a photo with thirty members of the Vanger clan staring back at Blomkvist, each and every one of them a possible suspect.
What Blomkvist doesn’t know is that his Mac is being hacked by angsty cyberpunk Lisbeth Salander, an abused ward of the court who works for Milton Security. Lisbeth’s tormenter is the reptilian Nils Bjurman, a sadistic misogynist who rapes her every time Lisbeth needs access to her own money. The scenes are brutal. Although they are certainly not there to titillate, one does wonder: if this were an English-language movie, would they be more harshly condemned?
Lisbeth is nothing if not a survivor and her revenge is on a par with Jennifer Hills’ bathtub scene in “I Spit On Your Grave.” The Swedish title of the film was “The Men Who Hate Women,” and from some of the repugnant male characters that litter the screen this moniker would seem more appropriate. Lisbeth’s unlikely partnership with Blomkvist goes some way to redress the balance, but the hideous murders their investigation gradually uncover one by one don’t do men any favours.
Director Niels Arden Oplev’s movie has been lavished with much attention in the press, but why is anyone’s guess. Of course, it’s messy. Most films trying to cram in corporate corruption, missing persons, Nazis, serial killers, and a rape revenge narrative would be.
Messy can be forgiven but this is about as inviting as an ITV 1 drama or an episode of “Wallander.” For a film that boasts so many squalid possibilities, it is remarkably unremarkable.
Defenders would point to the movie’s find, Noomi Rapace as the darkly troubled Lisbeth, but her character is only slightly better drawn than Luc Besson’s “Nikita.” Her back story is hinted at in a couple of flashbacks, and should make the next two parts of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” trilogy slightly more arresting, but if it’s a down and dirty crime threesome you’re after you should watch watch “Red Riding” instead.