The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Review

There are two kinds of people in the world (probably). Gentle Reader: you are either the kind of person who is excited to see a 2 1/2-hour Swedish thriller (in which case you probably also listen to a lot of Animal Collective and, I don’t know, Alcazar?) or you not. Either way, you are not likely to be easily swayed by my opinion. Which is great, because now I don’t have to worry about changing your mind, potential GWDT viewer.

The movie’s original title was Men Who Hate Women, which makes sense–while the film does have a female character who does indeed possess a dragon-shaped tattoo, naming the film after her body art is like renaming Silence of the Lambs as Strong Southern Woman in Sensible Shoes.

Okay, plot: disgraced journalist (Mikael Blomkvist, played blandly by Michael Nyqvist) tries to reopen the cold case of a girl who disappeared from her family home–on an island! during a parade!–forty years earlier. The girl’s uncle, Henrik Vanger(Sven-Bertil Taube), is the paterfamilias of a rich and powerful dynasty, every member of which is a potential suspect. Especially because some of the older family members used to be NAZIS. If after ingesting that little clue you haven’t already guessed 90 percent of the resulting action (sadism! pseudo-religious fanaticism! sex basements!), I can only assume that you have never seen a movie ever.

Blomkvist is joined in his investigation by Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a brilliant computer hacker. In the grand tradition of movie computer hackers everywhere, Salander is a violently antisocial genius. She is also essentially a receptacle for pain with bangs. She also has really excellent shoulder muscles, which is neither here nor there. Dragon Tattoo is the kind of movie that is often referred to as Gritty and Unflinching because a lot of people do really terrible things to Salander, and then she does some really terrible things to them. Grittily. Really Bad Things have happened to her, as evidenced by the many times she abruptly leaves a conversation to smoke and stare, like a mentally unbalanced campfire. It feels like a watered-down version of Inglourious Basterds, complete with traumatized female heroine and some cartoonish violence directed at Nazis, but without Basterds’ audacity or vision. On the plus side, it doesn’t have Eli Roth.

The movie drags out each and every plot point to the fullest extent possible, making you feel every second of its 148 running time. It’s a buddy movie–Lisbeth and Mikael don’t get along! She doesn’t like the music he listens to! She puts ketchup on her eggs!–it’s a von Trier-style exercise in masochism–men beat up women! women chase after aforementioned men with golf clubs and beer bottles!–it’s a nail-biting thriller–photo-scanning montages! Unfortunately, none of these snippets carry emotional weight or truth, and as a result the movie feels lightweight and patched together.

Whatever strengths the film possesses (Noomi Rapace’s furious and intense performance, the general sense of eeriness that pervades the island) aren’t enough to save it by the time the plot twists come rolling in during the third act. For the most part, they’re absurdly predictable, and the ending is so obviously outlandish, so completely unworkable, it feels like the filmmakers just gave up. NOT TO SPOIL you guys for this Swedish movie you’re never going to see anyway, but the idea that multiple characters would conspire to conceal a massive and unnecessary secret for years, causing others immense pain in the process, when telling the truth and going to the authorities would have saved them time, energy, fear, and anguish in the first place. Maybe the Swedish police are terrible? I don’t know, you guys. Just go watch Inglourious Basterds instead.