Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

So far this year most of my favourite movies have been male-centric (Up in the Air, Kick-Ass, A Prophet, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll) although some had strong female supporting characters it was the men who got the lion's share of the screen time. So its finally refreshing for me to enjoy a film which gives a strong woman, Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth, equal footing with the predominantly male cast. Lisbeth is the titular girl with the dragon tattoo, a computer hacker with a background of mental health problems who essentially works as a private investigator. Meanwhile journalist Mikael Blomkvist is arrested, most probably set up,and then asked to investigate an old murder before his sentence begins. The two are forced together after Lisbeth hacks into Blomkvist's computer and solves a riddle to do with the case. It is when Blomkvist and Lisbeth start to work together that the film really hits its stride. Before that is seems quite muddled and contrasted with half setting up Blomkvist's investigation while the other half focusing on the sexual abuse that Lisbeth's suffers at the hands of her boss. It is these scenes that are the most uncomfortable as they occur in quick succssion and a lot of people in the audience where covering their eyes when these scenes were happening. They never go too far but they are still painful to watch but in a way they are means to an end of getting the two protagonists together.

Blomkvist and Lisbeth's relationship is a strange one and one of the film's key themes is the differences between the old print media represented by Blomkvist and the computer era represnted by Lisbeth. Clashing sometimes and sleeping together elsewhere it demonstrates Lisbeth's reluctance to let anyone into her life and we are shown in flashbacks exactly why that is. I felt at times that the film wasn't particularly cinematic and would work just as well as a two-part crime drama in the veins of something like the Scandavian Wallander or maybe Waking the Dead on these shores. But towards the end I'm glad this was on the big screen and one scene in particular, on the motorway, works much better at the cinema. Although the story stretches credibility at times and some of the coincdences are a little contrived overall it does hold your attention to the final reel. A very good ending to the film hopes that the other two books of Stig Larson's Millenium Trilogy get adapted also. But for me its Rapace's peformance that puts the film in a league of its own.