The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Thursday, December 22, 2011) (122)

I recently re-read my review of the Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from last year in advance of seeing this newer update from David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian (it's fine, you can tell me my methods are unfair). After seeing this new version, I can tell you it's almost exactly the same movie and the things I said about that version I would say again here.

This film has a nice fast pace, the acting is solid throughout -- even considering the corny Swedish accents all the actors have to use (including the honest-to-goodness Swedes in the cast who almost sound more American than anything else) -- there is nothing particularly Swedish or Scandanavian in feeling in the style here (sorry, Ingmar and Carl Theodor), and overall it's a fun, pulpy movie that leads you down six different roads and pulls them all back together nicely at the end.

The story has not changed much from the book (which I've never read) or that other movie. Mikael Bloomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist who starts to research a murder on a remote island for a billionaire industrialist. At some point he hires a research assistant, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), who has a checkered life, an awesome libido and an inky back. The deeper they dig into this family history, the more they find Nazism, sexual abuse and weird culty murders. Add on top of this a sprinkling of leather camp and sexual torture and you got yourself a blockbuster!

It's hard to say if this is a particularly Fincher-ific movie. Much of the story happens to take place at night (when Fincher really comes alive, like the cyber-noir director he's meant to be), the heroine is written as a Goth who rides a motorcycle and there's already some delicious torture porn elements to the story. Having never read the book and only knowing the story from the Swedish film, I can't say much about any details that were in the book that Fincher extracted or what he might have injected himself, but I will say that this seems like a generally light amount of Fincherese (mostly seen in the sex torture parts). Mostly this feels like a very well made, polished Hollywood movie -- a bit of a director-for-hire piece than any standout in his oeuvre (like Se7en, Fight Club or Zodiac are).

There's really nothing negative to say about this film. It's very long (as was the Swedish version... I guess that's the result of a long and intricate book... and I'd much rather a 160-minute movie to a two-part piece, like they did with the last books of the Harry Potter or Twilight series), very detailed and somewhat complex in terms of familial relationships and who did what to whom and when. I guess I would say that all of that is a bit of complexity for complexity's sake; I'm not sure it's a particularly richer movie because of the baroque plot. It's a bit of bread and circus, but it's pretty tasty.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Wednesday, October 26, 2011) (93)

I think the content of and idea behind this film is slightly better than the net result. This is a documentary about the Black Power movement told through footage shot at the time by Swedish television crews in America. I have no idea why, but apparently the Swedes were totally obsessed with the movement and several black leaders went to Sweden to speak and raise money for their cause at the time. Weird. This brings to mind all sorts of interesting ideas of how a domestic issue or art is best analyzed by foreigners who have more perspective on the issue. It's hard to imagine an American crew treating the players involved and the history herein similarly. Still, there are aspects to this film that don't totally make sense, like why the director, Goran Olsson, feels it's necessary to have contemporary black American musicians comment on their views of '60s-'70s black leaders or the very footage we see (a bit of a mise-en-abime nightmare, really). What do I care what Talib Kweli or Questlove think about Angela Davis or Stokely Carmichael? And why not, say, other civil rights leaders, still alive today? Why not get Jesse Jackson to talk about his views of the more militant faction of the civil rights movement? The film raises as many questions as it answers... though it's still well done and interesting.

Stars: 3 of 4

The Girl Who Played With Fire (Friday, July 9, 2010) (71)

This is the second film in The Girl With/Who trilogy based on the books by Stieg Larsson. Continuing with several of the same characters from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this film opens with a laconic giant trying to extort the police file of heroine Lisbeth from her disgusting financial guardian. At the same time, Blomkvist the magazine editor, is approached by a young journalist who has written an investigative piece on an Eastern European white slavery ring in Sweden. Somehow these two stories are connected through the giant and ultimately the young journalist and Lisbeth's financial guardian are murdered. As the cops begin to investigate, Blomkvist and Lisbeth (working separately) do as well.


The story is very fast-paced and moves along smoothly, but it feels even more trite than the first one. It feels like layer upon layer upon layer of detail and subplots, many of which don't really add up to much. The film feels rather like a massive Rube Goldberg device where one thing leads to another and to another, which seems sorta obvious if you're following along with each step, but convoluted if you're just looking at the overall picture. Director Daniel Alfredson (who seems to have worked almost entirely in Sweden ever) does a decent job, but not a brilliant one with this narrative.


One thing that does upset me is the treatment of Lisbeth. She is a smart woman who is acutely aware of people trying to take advantage of her. She has a hot, naked, lesbian sex scene with a hot girl, which is a bit of a throwaway (as are the several bare-ass shots Alfredson gives us) but it does establish at least that she's into women and (presumably) not men. We know that she was raped and abused by her financial guardian in the first film and we see in this that her father abused her mother (she threw gasoline on him and burned him, ergo the title). She is rather masculinized (at least a butch), I think, riding motorcycles, hacking computers, wearing jeans and t-shirts and keeping her hair rather short.


Yet Alfredson misses no opportunity to sexually objectify her and turn a cynical male gaze on her (for that matter, the poster for the film is unnecessarily super sexy, I think). I don't like that a character who has no interest in sex with men, and who we like specifically because of how she survived her rape, is being made to be a sexual object. I think this is misogyny at it's most sick and trite.


Despite the direction, the acting is still top-notch from Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. They are both still very good in their roles and fit naturally into the scenery they're in. Sadly the script has them onscreen together for mere moments, so it's only one or only the other all the time, losing the wonderful chemistry and camaraderie they had in the first film.


Again, the film feels very American and not really Swedish at all. It is a pretty simple story, actually, but I think its complicated by weird sub-stories that don't go very far. It's not quite as long as the first, but it's over two hours and I'm not sure it needs to be. I think at least 15 minutes could have been cut out (although considering its based on a beloved book, that probably wouldn't go over well with audiences). It's a decent film and generally a fun ride, but nothing brilliant.


Stars: 2 of 4

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Friday, March 19, 2010) (20)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a film adaptation of the first book of the trilogy written by Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson. The rather complicated story is about an investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who gets a job from a mega-rich industrialist, Henrik Vanger, to investigate the murder of his teenage niece some forty years before. As soon as Blomkvist begins the search on a remote island where the Vanger clan all have their houses, he is joined by computer-hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander who has taken an interest in Blomkvist (who has been disgraced by a recent libel case against him). She has a thing against men who abuse and hurt women (which goes back to her own troubled childhood).

The two begin to look into the possible suspects inside the Vanger family and uncover a world of rape, abuse, Nazi love and murder, all covered up by the family's status and political power. And just when you think the story has concluded, there is another chapter (the total run time is more than 2 hours 30 minutes).

The story is very complex with several threads going on at once. Lisbeth (the eponymous inked girl) has a whole subplot of her own where she has a financial guardian who abuses and rapes her and tells her she will be cut off from her money if she tells anyone about it. She ultimately gets a very graphic, sadistic revenge on the man. It seems like the multiplicity of narrative threads in the film would work better in the novel than onscreen. For a viewer, it seems like a bit of a hat on a hat and that some of these extra subplots could have been cut out.

The acting is very good throughout. Michael Nyqvist is great as Blomkvist. He's a smart journalist who seems to have a good moral sense about him. He's a diligent researcher and knows how to bend the rules to get what he needs. Nyqvist looks very smart and clever, with a brightness in his eyes that's refreshing to see. Noomi Rapace is also great as Lisbeth. She is very quiet and methodical, but clearly knows what's going on below the surface of an event. She's flirty at times (though clearly she has had bad interactions with men) and also has a zeal in her gaze that's nice to see.

I was rather surprised by how frank and violent the film was. The scene where Lisbeth is getting raped by her accountant we basically see the whole thing - but also see close ups of her face as she cries out and winces in pain. This is pretty shocking. Then we see in great detail exactly how she savagely takes revenge on the man. Later we see several very violent acts shown without any apologies or filters. Director Niels Arden Oplev (a Danish man, not a Swede) clearly thinks that showing exactly what is happening is the best way to present the material (as opposed to, say, suggesting what is happening offscreen). It is powerful stuff, though not for the easily shocked.

I guess it's unfair to hope that every Swedish movie should look particularly "Swedish", by which, I guess, I mean "look like Bergman". Still, this film comes off much more like a fast-paced American action film than anything I've ever seen from Scandinavia. It does move along from one point to another very smoothly and very fast. There is something nice about this, definitely. Still, I have to ask myself that if this was a Hollywood production with big action stars in it, would I like it at all - and I'm not sure that I would. I think there is something nice and refreshing in the straightforwardness of it - something that is ultimately Swedish that I like.

Stars: 2.5 of 4