virag's movie reviews: the girl with the dragon tattoo (2009, sweden)

this is a very good movie based on an awful book.  the screenwriters and director made some wise decisions regarding the characterization, plotting and tone of the film.  one of the most useful was turning the doughy sexual superman of the book into the rather much less oversexed and more downtrodden mikael blomkvist of the film.  this decision makes the blomkvist/salander pairing seem more necessary for both characters, and removing the finality of salander's rejection promises a more dramatic resolution than the following films actually provide.  i did not think it was necessary to remove the vanger family biography plot point, but it did not detract much from the plot except for the fact that the movie's bad guys should have been way more jumpy and dangerous from the very beginning.  the lisbeth salander casting was excellent, and noomi rapace did a good job embracing the role.  the next two films didn't keep up the thoughtful quality of this one.  the second movie was almost incomprehensible on its own.  in fact, the production team probably should have sought to make only two long films out of the three books, reworking the plot and characters much as the first film did, paring huge useless chunks of the pointless back and forth in the second and third books, and massaging the overall plot of the entire story into a more coherent and dramatic and plausible--and ultimately more human--story.  they didn't but what the hell.  this movie was pretty good.