Ferocious Dragon Tattoo a Thrilling Mystery
Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a noted Swedish investigative journalist on the verge of being railroaded into prison for a series of recent articles about a particular company’s alleged malfeasance. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is a computer expert with a troubled past working for a security firm who specializes in finding out information no one, not even your priest, should ever know.
Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace in Music Box Films' The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
These two should never have met, but when Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), the aging head of the powerful Vanger Group, convinces Mikael to look into the four decade old disappearance of his niece Harriet the duo suddenly find themselves working side by side all the same. With suspects crawling out of every corner and with the tide twisting and turning into unanticipated directions, both are swept together out of a sense of emotional longing and need that neither even knew existed. But a killer is watching their every move, and the closer Mikael and Lisbeth come to the truth the nearer true evil gets to ending a relationship before it even has the opportunity to truly begin.
There is no easy synopsis for Niels Arden Oplev’s masterful and mesmerizing investigative thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Based on an acclaimed series of books by Stieg Larsson, this intense Swedish import is features a labyrinthine plot so dense and chaotic I’m finding it impossible to do it any sort of justice in this review. There is so much going on here, a lot of it filled with the kind of pain and pathos typical Hollywood fare would runaway screaming from, that I never quite knew which direction things would twist in next. For a full 152 minutes I that in the theatre spellbound, and while I knew a lot of time was passing not once did I ever want to leave my seat as I was for all intents and purposes glued right to it.
What I can say is that neither Oplev nor his screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg ever move things to a place that feels false or forced. As massive as this puzzle is and as fractured as is it can feel much of the time somehow the filmmakers are able to bring it all together time and time again with seemingly little effort at all. They make it look easy, and even when you think things can’t get anymore dense or that there can’t possibly be another tangent for the film to follow Oplev and company twist things around again with such naturalistic confidence the effect is almost startling.
Personally, I loved how the movie didn’t skimp out on fleshing out both its main characters even though they spend the majority of the first half not even close to being together. Their parallel storylines mix and match, yes, but they do not join, both Mikael and Lisbeth battling personal demons – particularly the latter – that must be vanquished before they can join forces to try and solve the Vanger mystery. Oplev moves the both of them from here to there almost as if they were chess pieces, and by the time they finally met it felt perfectly natural that they’d team up like a modern day Nick and Nora and start dolling out justice.
It should be noted that much of this is not for the faint of heart. There are sequences here, especially ones concerning Lisbeth, that had my stomach in my throat and caused me a couple of times to whimper audibly under my breath. Oplev does not veer away from the harsher aspects of his tale, but it is through these sequences of suffering and abuse that the full dimensionality of the characters is revealed and I hesitate to think how I’d felt about them or the film had the filmmakers not dared to go there.
I should also say I had the murderer pegged very early on as there are only so many suspects capable of the crimes being unearthed. This didn’t matter me all that much, though, as I was so enthralled with everything going on the fact I had this one facet figured didn’t mess with my enjoyment of the whole one single bit. More than that, when the reveal is finally made the person at the center of it delivers such a whopper of a performance he instantly enters the pantheon of serial killer villain hall of fame, and where just the sight of Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs gives me the willies the thought of this picture’s bad guy grinning like Cheshire Cat while he proudly rules over his lair has me visibly shuddering as I sit here and type.
There is so much more I want to talk about, not the least of which are the blistering and emotionally exhausting performances from both Nyqvist and Rapace, but I find myself wanting to go in the direction of less is more and let audiences discover just how magnificent this film is all for themselves. What I will say is that the job Oplev has done here is beyond reproach, and if The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo doesn’t end up being one of 2010’s most talked about imports then audiences are going to be missing out on one of the best thrillers of this or any other year.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
