The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Niels Arden Oplev
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil TaubeDirector: Niels Arden Oplev
Brand: MUSIC BOX FILMS CORP.
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Swedish (Original Language); English (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 152 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-07-06
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: MBFHE005
Studio: Music Box Films Home Entertainment
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; NTSC; Subtitled; Widescreen
Movie Reviews of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Movie Review: Män som hatar kvinnor
Summary: 5 Stars
Män som hatar kvinnor, or The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, as it is known in the U.S., is based on the first of Stieg Larssons three bestselling novels. Män som hatar kvinnor translates to "men who hate women." Larssons had intended a 10 novel series, but the three published novels form a sort of trilogy by themselves. He calls it The Millenium Trilogy. The novels were published posthumously, and he had some notes and other unfinished books, but these three books would seem to be his legacy. The film is in Swedish with English subtitles. I enjoy foreign films and don't mind reading the subtitles. I like hearing the films in their original tongue. Swedish has a mysterious sound, vaguely Germanic--nothing at all like the Swedish cook on The Muppets.
I saw this film at the Majestic Fox Theater in Bakersfield, a vintage movie palace restored to its former glory, as the kick off to FLICS, the foreign film club that allows the good folks of Bakersfield the opportunity to see foreign films that they might not otherwise be able to. The huge theater was packed, and I had no idea what a buzz this film had going for it, fueled no doubt by the bestselling books by Stieg Larssons.
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, starring Michael Nyqvist as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, the dragon tattooed girl who is paid to hack into Blomkvist's personal files, but then becomes his ally. It is at once an action packed mystery, a study of abuse victims, a story of female empowerment, and an unlikely romance. Though the film has graphic scenes of sex and violence, you never get the feeling that it is gratuitous, just that it is necessary to tell the story of Lisbeth, and how she came to be the way she is. How she refused to be a victim, and fought back against those who would try to oppress her. In some ways, she is like a punk rock female Charles Bronson in his vigilante/revenge mode. She looks like Lady Gaga, but with piercings, and instead of outrageous dresses made out of meat, she wears the black pants and leather jacket of a biker. She is an abuse victim, but when she fights back, you are with her all the way.
In some ways the movie is an unlikely romance, or a wish fulfillment fantasy of older men who'd like to be swept off their feet by some hot young hacker on a motor bike. However, it is handled so delicately, and the character of Blomkvist is so pure of heart--he only wants to get at the truth and expose evil and corruption--so you never feel like he is just some D.O.M. (dirty old man). You don't feel like a voyeur watching the movie, either. Though there are some graphic scenes, they don't dwell on anything more than it would take to tell the story. The audience I saw it with covered a wide range of ages, from young adult to seniors, and everyone seemed to enjoy it immensely. They liked having their cake and eating it, too.
As good as Nyquist is at conveying the purity of Blomqvist, the character who you'll be thinking about the most in the days to come is Lisbeth Salander, as excellently portrayed by Noomi Rapace. She already had the holes from piercings in her younger punk rocker days, so they had only to paint on the tattoos to transform her into Lisbeth. Throughout many harrowing scenes, she never broke character. Though she tended to have almost a poker face, you really got the feeling that she was a real person going through all these ordeals, and of course, parts of her thoughts were a mystery, but other feelings could be easily read as if they were written in flaming letters 12 feet high.
She inhabits her role so thoroughly that there is talk of a boycott unless they use Noomi to play Lisbeth in the English language version scheduled to begin shooting in 2011 with director David Fincher (Fight Club). I don't know that an English language version is necessary, but if anyone is going to do it, it might as well be David Fincher. I hope they do use Noomi, though The Bottom Line is I would find it hard to boycott, regardless of who played Lisbeth.
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage) by Stieg Larssons
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larssons
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larssons
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest DVD (Luftslottet som sprangdes) [Imported] [Region 2 DVD] (Swedish) (2009)
The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)
Worlds Apart (2008) Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
We Shall Overcome (2006) Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
As It Is in Heaven (2004) Michael Nyqvist was Daniel Daréus
Downloading Nancy (2008) Michael Nyqvist was Stan
Daisy Diamond [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Sweden ] (2007) Noomi Rapace was Anna
Summary of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her beloved uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and the tattooed and troubled but resourceful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) to investigate. When the pair link Harriet s disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vanger s are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.Fans of Stieg Larsson's Men Who Hate Women may have been concerned about how the Swedish author's novel would translate to the screen, but they needn't have worried. Significant changes to the source material have been made, but director Niels Arden Opley's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as it's now called, is mostly riveting. As the story begins, middle-aged investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has just been convicted of a bogus charge of libel against a rich and corrupt corporate hotshot when he's unexpectedly offered a most unusual gig. An aging captain of industry named Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) wants Blomkvist to figure out what happened to Vanger's niece, who disappeared more than 40 years earlier; not only is the old man convinced that she was murdered, but he suspects that another member of his large and rather disagreeable family (which includes several former Nazis) is the culprit. Blomkvist takes the job, which includes spending at least six months on Vanger's isolated island in the middle of winter. But what he doesn't know is that he's being spied on by twentysomething Lisbeth Salander (brilliantly played by Noomi Rapace in a career-making performance), the titular Girl and the possessor of remarkable skills as a sleuth and computer hacker. With her gothlike piercings and all-black clothes, Lisbeth is a vivid character, to say the least. While we don't exactly know the details of her dark past, it's obviously still with her; indeed, she's just been assigned a new "guardian" (like a parole officer) to look after her finances and other matters. We also know that she is not someone to mess with; when the guardian turns out to be a thoroughly vile monster, Lisbeth gets back at him in one of the more satisfying revenge sequences in recent memory. That Lisbeth and Mikael should end up working together, and more, isn't especially surprising. But the horrifying details and depths of depravity they uncover while working on the case (parallels to The Silence of the Lambs are facile but appropriate) definitely are, and Opley does a nice job of keeping it all straight. At more than two and a half hours, the film is long, with its share of grim, graphic, and scary moments, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a winner. --Sam Graham
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