ViewGuide

Created Mar 23, 2010 10:17PM PST • Edited Nov 07, 2013 01:45AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Hollywood must be licking its chops to remake this Swedish hit. Chockablock with career-making roles, combining fashionable anti-capitalist politics with feminist blood-lust, and striking a crisply efficient thriller tone, it suffers only from a poor title, not that that matters given how huge the book was.

   GDT works as a revenge thriller a la Taken, where heinous acts by bad men redound in spectacular acts of turnabout. It also works as a classic whodunit, with an amateur sleuth compelled to solve a 40 year old murder amongst a wealthy family living in luxury on an isolated island. Agatha Christie, call your office.

   A word of warning about this subtitled movie: Swedish is an odd language to American ears, full of squishy sounds and unfamiliar intonations. Thus the emotional flow is hard to follow even if the subtitles aren’t. Of course, that won’t be a problem once David Fincher get his hands on it…

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   It’s tough to fully judge the performances because of the Swedish. Still, here goes:

   • Noomi Rapace cuts an appropriately radical figure as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo herself: slim and boyish, tough and agile, hard and true.
   • Michael Nyqvist plays laconically capable as the Lefty journalist who gets pressed into a Private Eye gig, and nearly loses his life in the process. Word is that George Clooney, Johnny Depp, and Brad Pitt are each interested in playing this role in the Hollywood remake.
   • Sven-Bertil Taube is touchingly effective as the elderly patrician who pursues a lifelong dream of saving his murdered niece.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The film nicely presages each dramatic – and violent – turn of events. For instance, the serial killer describes to a victim his delight in watching the hope get extinguished from victims’ eyes. We’re later treated to a shot of him going to his own death, visibly giving up the ghost as he realizes the gravity of his situation. Accomplished filmmaking, that.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    It’s clear why the novel sold millions of copies. It deftly combines classic elements of action, serial murderer, and private eye tales, punching it all up with a straight shot of grrrl power.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Horrid 3.9

    Ultra-violent, most especially through two viscerally shot rape scenes, though the second of these turns the tables in very satisfying fashion.

17. Sex Erotic 3.5

18. Violence Brutal 3.5

19. Rudeness Vile 4.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

    Are there really Nazis afoot in Sweden some 50 years after Hitler killed himself? More importantly, will the inevitable Hollywood remake try to cast the wealthy killer as part of a sick movement like the Nazis, or just as a garden variety capitalist pig? Probably the latter, since Hollywood often conflates capitalism with crime, just as committed Communist and Girl author Stieg Larsson did.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0