Date Watched: 1/15/10
Viewing: 1st
This movie and its counterpart "The Girl who Played with Fire" recently showed up on my netflix radar. Then I was at Sam's club with my father and I saw a stack of books about 3 meters high (yes, I just used the metric system) of these books. Apparently they are currently best-sellers over here now and quite popular with the mainstream audience. And so I decided to watch the first of the trilogy of Swedish movies (based on the respective books by Stieg Larsson). The plot is actually quite interesting, it starts off with a journalist, Mikael Blomqvisk, who is sent to jail for libel (not slander) and thus has 6 months before he serves a short sentence (3 months, but they act like it's the end of the world). He is hired by a rich man to find out who murdered his niece a long time ago and he later gets help from a crazy computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, in solving this mystery.
A quick caveat, I'm sure the book is far better than the movie is, as is usually the case, so I recommend you read the book if my review sounds interesting. Let me start off my saying I hate knowing exactly what a movie is about so I did not research what exactly the book was about or like. So I was very surprised when the movie was so dark. The rich family has quite the troubled past only equaled by Lisbeth's dark present life. The parallels are quite interesting and often quite gripping and traumatic. The character of Lisbeth is great. She has deep-rooted issues, is complicated, irrational, brilliant, distant, and reserved yet you fell somewhat drawn to her. I loved watching her various relationships with other characters unfold and progress. Although this movie wasn't too graphic visually, mentally it was fairly intense in the most realistic of ways. Then I watched the next movie ("Antibodies", review coming shortly) which made this look like a Disney movie. The plot kept me guessing a little and definitely spread the doubt early as to which family member it might be. The end wasn't necessarily great but it was conclusive and nice for the protagonists. I loved the questions posed about morality and whether evil is created or inherent. Also it asks if it is ok for revenge in some sense, especially if it's provoked in one capacity or another. When is it alright to either look the other way or take things into your own hands?
Overall, this movie was a dark, mystery type that does a good job keeping you engaged. It's realistic portrayals of abuse, family, and darkness is what makes this Swedish film quite brilliant.
I would recommend if you: like realistic mysteries, enjoy deeply disturbed and fragmented families, love foreign movies, or love puzzling protagonists (Lisbeth in this case)
Rating: 4 Stars
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