The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I've read the book as well as seen the film and I'm happy with both. A perfect example of how to make a crime thriller with a grim, dark atmosphere and very little frantic action. The choice of the two leads was atypical, Lisbeth wasn't just unpleasant but unpleasant to look at, Mikael Blomkvist was a middle-aged man with fat rather than muscle, but it worked surprisingly well. This uncontrived look gave the film a much more down-to-earth and realistic vibe. It just goes to show the difference between European and American filmmaking. Instead of melodrama, you’ll get a good dose of chilling atmosphere. I can't go below five stars. (03/01/2017)

I've started reading the book, the film was first... despite the fact that in its complexity it cannot and does not want to match Larsson's juggernaut, it belongs in the top league given its atmosphere and processing. Oplev is an excellent stylist who films in a simplified form, but with a sense of logic and pace. I really, really like how the script cleverly shifted Mikael from a confident seducer to a closed weirdo – the Rapace/Nyqvist duet is absolutely excellent for the film's purposes. By the way, Noomi is extraordinarily charismatic and played Lisbeth perfectly. The film has very high quality equivalent for everything that it lacks from the book. The result is a contagious and catchy detective story... although it lacks the socially critical dimension of the original, it moves in its genre quite sovereignly. It's a very difficult challenge for Fincher... (20/07/2010)

It was clear to me that the movie could never fit in everything from the book, but the book still took a beating more than I would have expected. Perhaps the only change for the better was that Blomkvist looked for Harriet because he remembered her from his childhood. Otherwise, I was and still am quite at a loss. Everything seemed too rushed to me, even the oft-mentioned rape (and revenge), the script just had pieces of lot of things just to have them appear in the film and then move away from them immediately... It barely had any atmosphere, dammit! The book stands and falls with Lisbeth Salander's character, and I was initially happy to see Noomi Rapace play her. In the end, though, it didn't seem very appropriate - she simply wasn’t weird enough. In this respect I'm pretty much betting on Rooney Mara from the American remake, who looks much more unusual from the photos. I'm giving it two and a half stars, mainly because after an hour I was thinking "Well, if I fell asleep now, nothing would actually happen". And that's not a good sign. (20/10/2013)

I didn’t read the novels and haven’t watched the other two parts of the trilogy yet, so I don’t know whether some of the apparently pointless things in this film will have any meaning in the future, but the fact is that they feel very redundant within the scope of one feature detective movie. That said, I believe in the principle that I call “pointless things happen” (not all the events that simultaneously take place in real life are important for the main event taking place, therefore, they too should be included in scripts – i.e. they don’t have to be directly causal), and as such, that relatively redundant affair with Lisbeth’s caretaker didn’t bother me at all. If the film had finished half hour earlier, I would give it five stars, but that pointless epilogue brought the rating down a point. (23/08/2010)

I can't resist comparing it to Fincher's version. The world of Millennium in Oplev's version is less flashy, but surprisingly enough, it's so inventive that many times the American version had no choice but to literally copy certain scenes along with the type casting (whether intentional or not). In this version, the intertwining of Blomkvist with the Harriet case is somewhat more logical, and the Vanger family tree is presented more clearly. Yet Blomkvist is less charismatic and his relationship with his wife seems to be non-existent. Lisbeth Salander is much more grown up and more mature overall. This form of Lisbeth is more in line with her new custodian, who is in many ways more disgusting and dangerous. Blomkvist's storyline lacks the cute relationship with the cat in the cabin on Hedestad Island, and Lisbeth doesn't give us much of her one-night lesbian romance. The Swedes are simply not as ethereal as the Americans, which is most evident in the character of Martin (Stellan is Swedish). One of the major changes is the guide to biblical references. The way in which the rapprochement between Lisbeth and Blomkvist comes about is different only in the delicate details, which is nice. However, the meeting with the Vanger family in the hospital, which is smooth in Fincher’s version, has been replaced here by dry Machiavellian babble. The Swedish film is also much less tolerant of Nazism, lacking the figure of the archivist, but the key catharsis associated with Lisbeth's past is considerably more raw and realistic. Contrastingly, the Australian chapter feels otherworldly, just as Lisbeth's loading of the property at the end fits somewhat less into the big picture. So what about the point? In the Swedish film, the last shot is of a man in love (!), while in the American one, the new-age heroine is struggling with a broken heart. Hmm.... (12/01/2012)