Reviews::Main

Director: Niels Arden Oplev Year: 2009 Language: Swedish (English Sub) Country: Sweden

Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits the big screen in this Swedish film adaptation. The basic plot from the novel remains intact, journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by the wealthy Henrik Vanger to investigate the possible murder of his neice some 40 years ago. Blomkvist soon uncovers a web of mystery surrounding the Vanger family. He is helped on his quest by a young hacker, Lisbeth Salander (The "Girl" of the title) who was initially given the assignment of gaining information about Blomkvist.

Much of the extraneous sub-plots from the novel have been axed as has the majority of the extra characters, trimming the story and cast down to a bare minimum required. Despite this, the film still runs to over 150 minutes. The web of intrigue and the basic murder mystery from the novel remain intact and are presented well. The main actors fit the characters from the book and give good performances and the film is well shot and looks good.

The reasonably long runtime went relatively quickly for me, although perhaps having read the novel helped in that regard since I always knew how far through the story we were.

Overall, well made and worth watching whether you've read the book or not.

Dave W - 14th March, 2010 - 11:53