Movie Review - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010)
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, and Sven-Bertil Taube
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Much talk has been made on the arthouse circuit for the films that make up Millenium Trilogy, based off of a very successful series of books by Stieg Larsson.  The first flick, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, did quite well for a foreign film here in the States and the Swedish mystery certainly has me intrigued to see what happens in the two follow-up films.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has just been convicted of libel against a well-known entrepreneur.  Before he has to head to jail, he's hired by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), an elderly gentleman who longs to discover who killed his niece decades earlier.  Mikael agrees to take the case (if only to get his mind off of the fact that he's going to have to go to jail in a few months), but unbeknown to him, his computers are being hacked by Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace).  I'll be honest...this whole subplot is a little shaky to me...I'm unsure in actuality why Lisbeth was hired by a company to hack Mikael's computer, but, nonetheless, she soon finds herself intrigued in Mikael's investigation and eventually contacts him in order to provide assistance in the case.  Eventually, the two meet and begin to search together for the murderer.

While the plot doesn't sound all that interesting on paper (or in this case, on the computer), it certainly never bored me.  In fact, the nearly 150 minutes flew by.  Bits and pieces of the mystery were revealed at the right moments to continue to provide suspense.  Still, there were scenes in the film that had me questioning why they were there.  There are some fairly intense moments involving Lisbeth prior to her meeting with Mikael that, while certainly providing shock value, were unnecessary.  I realize that in the grand scheme of things, these difficult scenes were in the film in order to create a more well-rounded character and to provide some background for what makes the rough-around-the edges Lisbeth the person whom she is, but despite the fact that the moments were well-produced, they stood out from the rest of the film (and not in a good way).

Nonetheless, just wanted to put this review up rather quickly (hence the probable lack of coherence), but one should note that this is a nice little mystery that is certainly well worth a watch.  It should also be noted that the main mystery is self-contained to this film (or at the very least appeared to be self-contained to this film as I have no idea what happens in the next flicks), so if you give this one a go and don't care for, you won't need to watch the other two films in the trilogy.

The RyMickey Rating:  B