The Swedish film version of the best-selling book is a compelling and suspense filled thriller that is clearly designed to shock and provide food for thought. It is based on the first of a trilogy of books written by Swede Stieg Larsson before he died. Central to the story is one of the most fascinating heroines ever devised. She is Lisbeth Salandar (played by Noomi Rapace), a young genius computer-hacking rebel covered in tattoos and body piercings. Her abusive childhood has left her bearing many emotional and spiritual scars and as a result she faces life’s challenges with seething intensity and brutal ruthlessness.
The story begins with disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) being hired to solve a mystery by an elderly billionaire named Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), who inhabits a eerie mansion on a remote island. Forty years before, his beloved niece Harriet had vanished from a family gathering on the island and because the access bridge was blocked, the killer must have been a member of Vanger's large and greedy family, which he hates.
Since Blomkvist has six months to waste before having to serve a prison sentence for libel, and because he is keen to remove himself from public scrutiny, he agrees to help. Blomkvist is unaware that Salandar who works for a security firm has been hired to watch him, and she takes an interest in his case after finding out about it from hacking his laptop. They eventually team up and begin uncovering terrible secrets involving Nazi sympathizers, religious maniacs, sexual perverts and a serial killer. However, their meddling puts their lives in danger as someone is willing to do anything to keep Harriet Vanger’s disappearance an unsolved mystery.
Director Niels Arden Oplev makes the best of the forbidding island setting, with the grey winter light, dark buildings and hostile locals used to create a chilly and frightening atmosphere. Rapace as Salandar is an absolute star and plays her scenes with ferocious intensity. Although she looked a little older than the book version, she certainly nailed the character.
You do need to be warned that this film is graphically violent with heavy sexual content. This is not erotic sex but rather it is rape, bondage and assault and so is grueling to watch and quite emotionally draining. The original Swedish title for the book was “Men Who Hate Women” and author Stieg Larsson, who was renowned as a sharp social critic, saw these stark scenes as part of a larger crusade of awareness to awaken people to the awful realities of women abuse in modern society. Much like that graphically violent opening battle scene in Saving Private Ryan is a statement against the true horrors of war. However, I thought the director went a little overboard as he seemed to revel in the story's sadism to an uncomfortable degree especially in the needlessly, vile rape scene.
Overall this is a good film; it is a classic edge-of-your-seat thriller and a more than competent psychological study. But it is also a sober, grown-up film that will leave you feeling edgy and unsettled. If it succeeds in creating greater awareness around how prevalent violence against women is, and how deeply damaging that violence is to the individuals involved and society around them, then perhaps it can be forgiven for some of its more graphic scenes. I am not totally convinced that it does however.
Three and a half stars out of five. Once again, be warned that the age restriction is fully earned.