Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (DVD)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube. Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist), apparently disgraced journalist, is hired for a six-month job of solving a 40-year-old murder mystery. Lisbeth Salander (Rapace), computer hacker extraordinaire, becomes interested in Blomkvist's case, believing that he was framed. Soon (and I'm not clear on exactly how it happens) the two are working together on the cold murder case. It is customary when reviewing a movie that has been made from a popular book to compare the two, usually to the detriment of the film. In this case, however, I think the movie is actually better in many ways than the book. I felt the book was guilty of many excesses, and these have been corrected in the film. The script is more economical, shorn as it is of much of the verbiage of the book. The story is set in Sweden, and the dialogue is in Swedish, with English subtitles. The DVD has an English soundtrack available, for those who don't like subtitles, and also features an interview with Rapace. Grade: A

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