DVD Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Vendetta Films

RRP $29.95

Currently one of the biggest selling DVD’s in Australasia "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is adapted from the book of the same name by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. It has become a smash hit across the world despite it being foreign language, subtitled film.

It’s probably not as good as the BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh as Inspector Kurt Wallander, but it comes close.

On one level it is a standard investigative thriller but it also says much about current social and political issues in Sweden. It also deals with a cast of characters all flawed morally and psychologically

Mickael Blomkvist, played tautly by Michael Nyqvist is an investigative journalist who has been running an expose on a corrupt industrialist but he has just been found guilty in a libel brought by the powerful man.

Before having to serve his sentence he is approached by another industrialist, Henrik Vanger’s (Sven-Bertil Taube), who wants him to investigate the forty year old disappearance of his niece.

The girl with the dragon tattoo a young Goth, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) who is a computer wiz, seriously intelligent with a lot of personal hang ups who has also worked for Vanger get involved with the case as well.

Rapace manages to convey a complex and edgy character somewhere between Cat Woman and a female assassin out of “Kill Bill”.

The title of the book in Swedish "Män som hatar kvinnor", translates as Men Who Hate Women and Lisbeth has had experience of those men in her childhood and more recently having been brutally raped. She becomes an avenging angel full of the anger and hostility she despises in others.

As the two of them discover a much more insidious background to the niece’s disappearance they become embroiled in a dark past not just of individuals but also Sweden’s unspoken history of Nazi involvement.

It’s a riveting story in which brutal scenes are interspersed with views of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes bleak Swedish landscpae which are like metaphors for the lives of the people they encounter.

At times the film is reminiscent of the 1960’s Antonioni film “Blow Up” as the couple piece together elements of the story though sets of photographs.

The films slow, tense unfolding plot has similarities to various CSI type films but manages to create a much more psychological sense than the more graphic and inane TV versions.

The film has become the third largest foreign language theatrical release ever in New Zealand beating such films as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Life Is Beautiful".

The book has sold over 27 million copies making Stieg Larsson the second most successful author in the world in 2008. The film adaptation has made over US$100 million at the box office globally and over $1 million in New Zealand.

The next two books by Larsen (The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest) will be released in cinemas later this year so it’s best to get a copy of the film to prepare yourself for more disturbing Swedish crime drama.