Trailer:
Criteria:
0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.
1/5 – Barely worth any time.
2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the
attention a little.
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have
used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe
used a bit more to the movie.
5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around – characters,
music, theme, storyline, etc.
Before seeing the 2011 movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", I decided to watch the original movie released in 2009. This series is based on the Millenium book series by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish writer (that passed away in 2004 according to wikipedia).
I tried to watch this movie with subtitles but I could not find it. So I went with a (poorly) dubbed version, since this movie was originally in Swedish.
Anyways, this is a murder-solving drama thriller. At first, I thought it would be more of a "let's investigate into the company" kind of movie but it was changed to something else later.
Plotline:
A journalist from the magazine Millenium named Mikael Blomkvist is charged with libel against one of the big corporate jerks in the area [billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström]. He is declared guilty in court, will have to pay a slightly hefty fee, and will have to serve 3 months in prison. The sentence for prison is set in the future.
Someone other than Wennerstrom takes interest in Blomkvist and orders information on him. Turns out that the 'researcher' is a female named Lisbeth Salander, a 24 yr old hacker. Lisbeth gives the interested party information on Blomkvist saying that she thinks Blomkvist was set up, regarding Wennerstrom.
The interested party turns out to be a member of a rich family named Vanger. The former CEO of Vanger Corporation, Henrik Vanger, wants Blomkvist to research into what happened to his niece. Harriet had disappeared 40 years ago when she was roughly 18. When the family noticed that she had disappeared, they had the cops search the island, the area around the island [dragging nets] and whatnot to try to find her. Many told Henrik to give up, that she was not coming back, but he had a suspicion that either she was alive or someone was sending a remembrance to him for her - before she disappeared, she would give him a pressed flower for his birthday every year and these continued to come to him over the 40 years that she had been disappeared.
Blomkvist works on researching the case for Henrik and Lisbeth continues to hack his computer, watching his research. She sends him a message to break the case because she finds it interesting, and he finds out about her through Vanger's lawyer [also finding out about how she hacked his computer].
Through Lisbeth's computing skills and photographic memory and with Blomkvist's persistent researching skills, they come across some very VERY disturbing clues about the case. These clues involve the Nazis in the Vanger family and a very dark past for two of the Vanger men. {SPOILERS} In the end, they find one of the culprits to the case, raping and killing women, and they find Harriet [not dead because she had run away from the raping/killing Vanger man].
Content:
This is a movie NOT for the faint of heart. Seriously.
Lisbeth is forced to perform a blowjob on her guardian [she is on parole for something they did not really discuss in the movie], beaten up in the train station, and raped by her guardian. She also revenges back on the guardian for being a perverted sadistic pig by tattooing his stomach with the words "I'm a sadistic pig, a pervert and a rapist".
Blomkvist is also shot at by a Vanger at one time, whom we assume to be the psychotic Harald Vanger, but probably was a different Vanger. Harald Vanger, later, also tried to shoot Blomkvist in Harald's house for breaking-and-entering.
The women that were dug up in the investigation were tortured, raped, and mutilated. All with Jewish names and their deaths referred to in the Old Testament [if a woman is found approaching an animal (sexually), then both the woman and the animal is to be killed].
Hetero sex between Blomkvist and Salander; homo sex between Salander and a woman.
Action:
There was a good amount of action, but not as 'action-y' as action movies like "Die Hard". One bike-car chase. Most of the plotline was rather intellectual, trying to figure out what happened to Harriet - going through photos, going through letters, going through accounting records.
Rating:
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.
3.5 out of 5
This movie was alright. It kept the attention and the "oh what is going to happen next" was wonderful. However, some of the content was unexpected and far too raw to enjoy. That content was disturbing.
The idea of digging through the wealthy's dirty laundry, and finding the kind of garbage that they found, is intriguing but not to the point of "hey, check out this movie". Sometimes, you should just leave someone else's bad past alone, especially if it is not your own.
Sure, Lisbeth was mysterious but I don't think that it was to the point of "wow, never thought of that" or "check this out!".
I wonder what the 2011 version is like, compared to this, and what the other 2 movies of the trilogy will be like.
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