The Girl With Dragon Tatoo Review

This is part of the mega-selling Millennium Trilogy of gruesome crime novels by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Originally (and pertinently) entitled Men Who Hate Women, this first story has now been adapted for the screen and finds its way to the UK having already become a European box office smash; the other two have also been filmed and their release here will presumably depend on how this is received. For what it's worth, I predict healthy returns. It is a forensic procedural with explicit violence, sex, sexual violence, violent sex and crime-scene photos of the sort that were once never shown, then just glimpsed and now blandly lingered over in every detail.

Michael Nyqvist plays Michael Blomkvist, a reporter facing an unjust prison sentence for criminal libel. Before his jail term starts, he is hired by a wealthy industrialist to solve the mystery of a niece who disappeared 40 years before, and who, poignantly, once babysat Blomkvist as a boy. He uncovers a string of hate crimes, and teams up with a super-sexy badass computer hacker with emotional issues called Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace), the eponymous tattooed girl. This film is probably too long, and it's only after the first hour that the narrative engines are properly revved, but director Niels Arden Oplev really socks it over. A must for the existing fanbase: others might have preferred it in two or three TV episodes.
Synopsis

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.