The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Man Som Hatar Kvinnor] Review
By Rich Cline
Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) is a journalist who has just lost a libel case. He has six months before he has to report to prison, and the wealthy Henrik Vanger (Taube) hires him to look into an old family mystery involving the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl nearly four decades earlier. What Mikael doesn't know is that a shadowy young woman, Lisbeth (Rapace), is following his every move. But soon they start working together to unravel a scandal that gets creepier with each discovery.
The original title literally translates as "Men Who Hate Women", and indeed, this is a film about extreme cruelty against women, from Lisbeth's terrible past (glimpsed in flashback) to her hideous encounters with her parole officer (Andersson). Not to mention the horrifically violent murders the investigation uncovers, which are linked to both racism and religious fundamentalism but ultimately boil down to vicious machismo.
Oplev directs the film with a slick, sinister, meticulous style that pulls us in from the beginning. The suggestive camerawork constantly sends chills down our spines as it catches details in the settings and characters. But even more interesting is the sharply well-played interpersonal drama between Mikael and Lisbeth, which develops unexpectedly and turns into a dark romance about two broken people who find each other in the middle of a seriously terrifying situation.
Of course, there's also a strong sense of vengeance threading through this tale, as Lisbeth gets even with the men who have brutally abused her, all while prying open this increasingly ugly 40-year-old murder case. The result is a film that's spikey and scary and often surprisingly funny. And even at two and a half gloomy hours of relatively standard potboiling detective work, it's constantly thrilling to watch. And yes, she has a pretty cool dragon tattoo.
Facts and Figures
Year: 2009
Genre: Thriller
Box Office Worldwide: $104.3M
Budget: $13M
Production compaines: Yellow Bird Films, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), Sveriges Television (SVT), Nordisk Film, Film i Väst
Reviews
Contactmusic.com: 4 / 5
Cast & Crew
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Producer: Soren Staermose
Screenwriter: Nikolaj Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg
Starring: Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist, Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, Lena Endre as Erika Berger, Sven-Bertil Taube as Henrik Vanger, Peter Andersson as Nils Bjurman, Peter Haber as Martin Vanger, Marika Lagercrantz as Cecilia Vanger, Tomas Köhler as 'Plague', Gösta Bredefeldt as Harald Vanger, Björn Granath as Gustav Morell, Ewa Fröling as Harriet Vanger, Stefan Sauk as Hans-Erik Wennerström, Gunnel Lindblom as Isabella Vanger, Willie Andréason as Birger Vanger, Ingvar Hirdwall as Dirch Frode, Annika Hallin as Annika Giannini, Sofia Ledarp as Malin Erikson, David Dencik as Janne Dahlman, Michalis Koutsogiannakis as Dragan Armanskij, Yasmine Garbi as Miriam 'Mimmi' Wu