Great Swedish meatballs this movie is long! I swear I started watching it in 1994 and just now finished. If you’re going to watch this film make sure you’ve got nothing else planned because dude, you will be there for a while.
Before I go any further, let me say this is a 2 hour 34 minute Swedish murder mystery based on an internationally best-selling book. Those of you who haven’t run screaming and crying from the room may now continue. There’s no need to discuss the cast, because they’re all from Sweden and I don’t know who any of them are. The guy who plays the lead role does look like a cross between Gregg Kinnear and Stellan Skarsgaard, but I looked it up and he is in fact, neither. If you’re really into the Scandinavian movie scene, you may be familiar with the cast and if so, bravo. Frankly, I don’t give a shit who they are, they were all fantastic. Even though I couldn’t understand what they were speaking, they spoke it with conviction.
Story? Oh yes, there’s lots of it. The leading man is Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist who’s been convicted of libel for printing a scathing takedown of a mighty Swedish business tycoon only to see all of his sources and source material disappear. He’s been set up and he knows it, but it’s a fight he’s already lost. Apparently the justice system there is a lot like ours, because he is free as a bird for 6 months before he has to actually go to jail.
Lisbeth Salander IS the girl with the dragon tattoo. She seems pretty gothy and distant and before long, she’s getting graphically face and ass raped by what I assume is her court appointed case worker. How lovely. Not to worry, before you know it, she ties up buddy and gives him a taste of his own medicine. Figuratively of course, because I’m pretty sure a man’s anus has no taste buds and a giant white dildo is no way to give someone medicine. In addition to being used as an unwilling fuckdoll, Lisbeth is also a hacker who appears to be obsessively tracking Mikael’s activity for an unknown security company.
Her research for this security company becomes of interest to Henrik Vanger, a really old super rich industrialist who wants Mikael to solve the 40 year old mystery of his niece’s disappearance/death. Now we have ourselves a good old fashioned murder mystery on our hands - one that draws Mikael and Lisbeth into a world of sex, lies, Nazis, more rape, and more murder. Plot twists and bunny trails galore allow for a very slow reveal, and then a very long ending.
How long an ending? Well, once you find out the whodunit part, there’s about 40 more minutes of movie. At all times I was aware of how drug out and elaborate the story was. This is a drama, there is no action (except for the rapes and one scene of consensual sex) so the pace can be excruciating. Sweden looks beautiful and I would love to visit some day. This is probably a very good book, and as a movie it feels like a good long Sunday afternoon read. I could forgive the pacing because of the strength of the story, but the ending needed to wrap itself up a LOT quicker than it did. Worth the watch.
I rate this 7 out of 10
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