06 January 2012

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

☻☻The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) is good, but doesn't measure up to the original 2009 Swedish version.

Based on the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an anti-social computer hacker with a photographic memory and a terrible personal history comes to form a bond with Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a disgraced journalist, that will eventually lead to the uncovering of the political scandal that spawned the series.




This first instalment entails a cold-case investigation of the disappearance and presumed murder of Harriet Vanger (Moa Garpendal), niece to retire industrial magnate Henrik (Christopher Plummer, recently viewed in Beginners [2011].


Although I enjoyed the film, I found the lack of consistency in portraying Swedish-language material annoying. Either show the documents in Swedish or in English, but don't flip-flop, depending upon how important it is for the audience to understand the contents.


With Stellan Skarsgård (recently in A Somewhat Gentle Man [2010]) as Harriet's suitably evil cousin, Martin Vanger. Yorick van Wageningen plays the slimy Bjurman, whom I didn't recognize from his drug-addled character in The Way (2010). 


PS The tattoo is also better in the Swedish version.



Speaking out:

  86%/90% rottentomatoes.com (6 Jan 2012*)
  8.2/10  imdb.com (6 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

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