3/23/10

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - 2010

Run, don't walk, to your nearest cinema that screens foreign films. This absolutely terrific Swedish film "Män som hatar kvinnor," is based on the first book of Stieg Larsson's best-selling "Girl" trilogy. It is in Swedish with English captions.

The story has been streamlined only a bit to make it possible to film; all the essential elements of that slam-bang book are up there on the screen, fully intact, and the casting is spot on.

If you are one of the thousands who have read the books, you may be sure that the more upsetting scenes are right there and you might want to hide your eyes. But rest assured, when Lis Salander, our eponymous "Girl" is tearing down that rain-slashed highway on her motorcycle, hell bent on saving Mikael Blomqvist's life, she is the very personification of an avenging angel. What a thrilling movie!

My companion commented on the casting: Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist is a forty-ish guy who, as she put it, "walks like he means it!" And Noomi Rapace makes the perfect Goth computer-hacker heroine.

I realize I'm falling all over myself, but I was so relieved to see that wonderful book manifested so perfectly on the screen, I can hardly wait for the next one, "The Girl Who Played With Fire."