The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (MA). Running time: 153 minutes. Director: Niels Arden Oplev. Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on the first book in late Swedish crime novelist Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. It is revealing to note that the novel's original title is Män som hatar kvinnor — Men Who Hate Women; the film, like the book, is not simply a procedural. Its protagonist, youthful hacker Lisbeth Sallander (Rapace), is capable of great violence. But her violence is a response to that which is and has been inflicted upon her.
Lisbeth's body is marked with the insignia referred to in the film's title. It could be seen equally as a badge of honour and a permanent bruise received after surviving past abuses. But the 'dragon tattoo' is more than simply ink on skin. Metaphorically, it is also a ferocious rhythm that beats within her. For Lisbeth, the best defense is a monstrous offense; attacked by four brutish male aggressors at a train station, this slight, antisocial woman's counter-attack is, by necessity, even more aggressive.
Lisbeth's 'dark passenger' proves to be an important ally. Made a ward of the state due to some mysterious past crime (as it turns out, another, formative incident of violence and counter-violence), Lisbeth finds herself victimised by a horrifically abusive guardian. These scenes are so intense that the shocking revenge Lisbeth metes upon her abuser is comparatively cathartic for the viewer. For Lisbeth, however, it is simply necessary.
She is an intriguing character, damaged but stronger for her appropriation of that damage as a weapon. So central is her arc that the film is not only named for her, it also spends an inordinate amount of time on this kind of gruesome character development. To such an extent that the murder mystery that drives the film's plot seems almost arbitrary.
Lisbeth finds herself investigating a decades-old missing person case, at the side of disgraced investigative journalist turned private sleuth Mikael Blomkvist (Nykvist). Mikael has been enlisted by aging industrialist Henrik Vanger (Taube) to try belatedly to discover what happened to his niece, who as a teenager disappeared without a trace. The Vanger family tree is broad and factious; some of its branches have Nazi connections. Not all family members are pleased about the reopening of this old, cold case.
A prodigious and astute computer hacker, Lisbeth at first assists