The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo who Played with Fire

It’s actually two movies, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl who Played with Fire, and there’s another one coming out later called The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. I just thought since these words will be about both movies I should get them both in the title.

I watched the first movie shortly after Roger Ebert started going nuts over it on the twitters. The main reason I think was because of the girl, one Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace) whose gothic portrayal interested me a lot. You don’t see a lot of movies like this with protagonists like that. Anyway, the trilogy of Swedish movies is based on a book trilogy which I haven’t read, collectively called the Millennium Trilogy. The title of the book the first film is based on literally translates to “Men Who Hate Women,” which is the main theme of the story. There’s lots of rape, murder, and various other brutality, and some excellent retaliation in the form of Lisbeth’s vengeful personality.

The first movie is a cold-case murder mystery amid a wonderful character study. The other protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, is an investigative reporter who runs foul of some powerful people and gets set up for some jail time. He gets six months before he has to go though, and some rich old guy contacts him about investigating the disappearance of his adopted daughter forty years ago. Turns out she was his babysitter a little while before that so he has some personal stake in it and accepts. Meanwhile, Lisbeth has an interest in this guy’s life because she was hired to investigate him, and ends up helping him with the case. She’s just gone through some rather nasty stuff with some dastardly men (which she handled in a completely badass way), and over time begins to see Mikael as a light of hope in a world that seems set on hurting her, while clinging to her mantra of solitude. This leads to some great relationship stuff and an awesome conclusion to the mystery.

Aside from the story, the film is great because it’s quite a slow film, taking its time to show beautiful and horrific scenes, build characters, and make the audience invest themselves in the investigation through wonderfully engaging riddle-solving. There isn’t a terrific amount of action in this one, but there are moments that are very gripping. It’s very easy to get emotionally involved in it.

The second film was directed by a different guy, so it’s a bit different. There’s a lot more action and a fair bit more skin. Still, it continues the story pretty brilliantly and the two main characters continue to be played to perfection. A little disappointingly though, Lisbeth and Mikael don’t actually meet up until the end of the film. They have tenuous contact here and there but mostly it’s two separate but interacting storylines. I suppose it’s necessitated by Lisbeth’s continued claim to loner-hood, but I would have enjoyed some more interaction between the main characters.

I can’t really go into the story much because the plot relies on the story from the first film, and thus discussing it would require explaining the stuff I left out in my first summary. It mostly focuses on a bunch of people in governmental/police positions taking advantage of women who no one cares about, which is of course the theme of these stories. There’s a bunch more murder and stuff and our heroes get embroiled in it by association. Instead of Mikael getting set up this time it’s Lisbeth, and Mikael sets out to clear her name. Lisbeth of course would rather take it into her own hands despite the heightened danger posed by some rather imposing fellows. Still, she hands out a few cans of whoop-ass, and with the help of Mikael and his team, brings a little justice to the world.

A very good movie, but not as good as the first. I’m hoping the third can live up to it.

This is the first time I’ve seen an indie/foreign film in a theater. Living in the DC area has its perks, I guess. Parking was ridiculous though. Also the subtitles weren’t integrated at all well; they were always completely white with no outline, so you couldn’t really read them at all during light-colored scenes. Guess I’ll have to wait until the Blu-Ray comes out to really know what’s going on.