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 (072310)
There have been mystery films over the years that I
love--I don’t think anyone would argue with me naming “The Maltese Falcon,” “The
Big Sleep” and “Chinatown” as three of the very best--but in those cases,
especially in regards to the ones that I have just cited, it is the colorful
array of characters and dialogue and not, with the possible exception of
“Chinatown,” the mystery aspect that makes them so memorable and keeps inspiring
audiences to watch them over and over again even when they know the resolution
by heart. I have always been fascinated with films in which ordinary
people--usually journalists with something to prove--become involved in some
kind of labyrinthine case and go about unraveling its secrets by pursuing an
endless number of leads and engaging in an exhausting amount of research
involving yellowing newspaper clippings, old photographs, microfilms and, if one
is especially lucky, microfiche. This may sound unbearably boring to most people
but if I had to choose between watching someone in a dusty library cubicle
poring through old magazines in an obsessive search for the tiniest clue or a
Transformer destroying an entire city block, I, for one, would take the cubicle
in a flash.
Sitting down to watch “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the big-screen
adaptation of the international best-seller from Swedish author Stieg Larsson,
part of a trilogy of novels that didn’t receive publication until after his
unexpected death in 2004, and being very familiar with the source material, I
expected it to be just another run-of-the-mill novel-to-film adaptation and was
both surprised and delighted to find that it was actually an obsessively
detailed investigative procedural along the lines of “Zodiac” and “All the
President’s Men” and the fact that the story it tells is fictional doesn’t get
in the way at all. Even better, it features a pair of intrepid heroes and a
gallery of villains, suspects and bystanders as fascinating and colorfully drawn
as the ones in the best mystery stories. Combine the two together and the end
result is a film that is so fascinating and compulsively watch able that even
when it stumbles here and there, most viewers will be too wrapped up in the
story to either notice or mind very much.
As the story opens, intrepid journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is
found guilty of libeling a powerful and corrupt Swedish business tycoon--he
claims that he was set up but even his colleagues at the magazine that he works
for have their doubts and begin distancing themselves from him. While waiting
for his prison sentence to begin, he is contacted by another rich and powerful
businessman, Henrik Vanger (Sven Bertil-Taube), the former CEO of a vast
family-run conglomerate, in the hopes that he will put his investigative skills
to use to help unravel a decades-old mystery involving his family. Back in 1966,
Henrik’s beloved 16-year-old niece Harriet, who actually babysat Mikael a few
times when he was a wee lad, mysteriously vanished and was presumably murdered
during a business get-together at the isolated island family compound--although
she vanished without a trace, someone, no doubt her killer, has been sending him
a pressed flower every year on his birthday as she used to, presumably to taunt
him about the horrible crime that they seem to have gotten away with scot-free.
At first, Mikael demurs but eventually agrees to look into the case and settles
in at the compound to pore through the mountains of documents, photos and
ephemera that Henrik has collected over the years in the hopes that his fresh
eyes will hit upon something that has otherwise gone overlooked.
While Mikael quickly uncovers a number of nasty secrets involving the Vanger
family--a couple of them were members of the Nazi Party back in the day and time
hasn’t exactly mellowed many of the others--he can’t quite pull together
anything concrete involving Harriet’s disappearance until he inadvertently
crosses paths with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a tough-as-nails
hacker/research expert with a troubled past of her own. After she manages to
crack a mysterious code in Harriet’s diary, Mikael takes on Lisbeth as a partner
and with the combination of his old-fashioned investigative skills and her
high-tech abilities, they soon manage to uncover a decidedly twisted web
involving long-buried family secrets and a string of seemingly unconnected and
long-unsolved murders from decades earlier for which Harriet may discovered a
common link--a bit of information that may have cost the girl her life and which
may cost them the same when it becomes obvious that someone is still willing to
kill in order to keep those secrets hidden.
Having read Larsson’s original novel, I can vouch for how accurately it has been
translated from the page to the screen—certainly there are elements that have
been left out--but taken strictly as a cinematic experience, the whole thing
works beautifully. Although the story is as dense and labyrinthine as they come,
director Niels Arden Opley recounts it in a slick and stylish manner that takes
the time to dig into all the little details and side stories inspired by the
central crime without allowing the story to get too bogged down in minutiae. In
fact, he relates the material involving the investigation in such an engrossing
manner that it has the patina of truth throughout even though the tale it tells
is fictional. Opley also shows a keen hand for handling the flashier and more
action-driven material as well--there is an extended set-piece about two-thirds
of the way through (to say any more would be to say too much) that is so
thrillingly conceived and executed that it may be the best such scene to appear
in a movie since the Guggenheim shootout in “The International” and this one has
a much better film surrounding it.
Aiding immeasurably to the film’s appeal are the two central performances. As
the world-weary but supremely dedicated Mikael, Michael Nyqvist does a good job
of creating a character that you actually believe is smart and resourceful
enough to put the disparate pieces of the complex puzzle together and as the
force of nature that is Lisbeth, Noomi Rapace offers up such a strong, sexy and
determined presence that watching her kicking ass both literally and from behind
her computer is to watch a star being born right before your eyes. Here is a
screen couple in which you can genuinely feel the chemistry between them working
in every scene--so much so, in fact, that I cannot wait to see how the
relationship between their characters develops over the course of the next two
films in the trilogy (which, in perhaps the happiest bit of film news so far
this year, they have already filmed).
Although not without its flaws--at 152 minutes, it does run a bit long at times
(I could have used a little less of the various miseries and brutalities
experienced by Lisbeth in the first hour, though I am willing to concede that
such scenes may be setting up things that will pay off in the next two
installments) and after all of the wild narrative convolutions, the final
revelation is just a bit too pat for its own good (you keep expecting one final
twist that never occurs)-- “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a knockout piece
of entertainment and the only thing that I can see holding it back from being a
smash hit in these parts is some audiences may reject it out of hand once they
learn that it is in another language. It would be sad if that happened because
this is a truly exciting piece of filmmaking and to skip it entirely just to
avoid reading a few subtitles strikes me as the height of insanity. Yes, there
is already an American remake in the works—David (Se7en, Fight Club) Fincher is
set to direct--and this could be the rare remake of a foreign film in which the
story is so sound and strong that it survives the transplant. However, as good
as that possible version may or may not be, it will be hard-pressed to live up
to this one.
The film is playing in limited release in art houses and is available now on
DVD. The sequel, “Girl
Who Played With Fire” opened in limited release on
July 9th.
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