DVD Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The most popular Swedish film in America in years, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has just been released on DVD and Blu-ray. Its sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, opens in Austin on Friday (keep an eye out for Don's review). The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an adaptation of the first of three books by Stieg Larsson that focus on an unconventional heroine (or anti-heroine), Lisbeth Salander.

The movie starts with two slightly entwined storylines, which merge more fully after an hour or so. Investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has just been sentenced to three months' jail for libel, although he has six months before he has to serve his prison sentence. He is hired for those six months by corporate giant Henrik Vanger, whose extensive greedy family runs the Vanger Group, to find out who killed Henrik's beloved niece Harriet nearly 40 years ago. Henrik ran a background check on Mikael before hiring him, and the security company used their best researcher ... a hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace). Lisbeth is the title character (although she is a woman and not a girl, ahem).

Mikael quickly becomes absorbed in the mystery of which Vanger family member could have murdered Harriet, who simply vanished into thin air under peculiar circumstances. In the meantime, Lisbeth is still keeping an eye on his computer activity and becomes interested herself in the mystery of Harriet Vanger. Lisbeth is also revealed as someone with a past history of abuse who is still targeted for abusive, violent behavior by many of the men she is forced to deal with. Her way of dealing with them is ... intense, to say the least.

The mystery of Harriet Vanger adds some good old-fashioned suspense to a film that would otherwise border on the exploitation flick genre. The combination is riveting -- if you're not glued to the screen by the latest twists in the murder/disappearance case, you're stunned by Lisbeth's unpredictable and violent actions. Although the movie was violent and included a few brief shots of brutal abuse, my wussy self was able to watch it with no peeking through the fingers -- for the most part, it is psychological tension rather than graphic violence.

Another effective combination in the film is in the two main characters. Lisbeth is not quite believable, at least for the first hour or so. I could not understand why, when she was assigned a parole "guardian" who started to take advantage of his role over her, she didn't file a complaint. As the movie progresses, her refusal to handle problems conventionally starts to make more sense. Mikael has a much milder personality, almost Everyman-like at times but with that driving curiosity that suits detectives as well as investigative journalists. The actors are all excellent -- Noomi Rapace is downright unforgettable -- and director David Fincher has his work cut out for him in finding an equally good Lisbeth for his planned American remake/readaptation.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in Swedish with subtitles, but the dialogue is rarely the key aspect of this film. You'll find your eyes drawn more toward the action and the characters than to the lines at the bottom of the screen. The film is also more than 2.5 hours long, which normally is difficult for me, but this film was so fascinating that I barely noticed.

Extras: The extra features on this DVD include interviews with director Niels Arden Oplev and actress Noomi Rapace, as well as something called "The Vanger Family Tree," which I assume is a graphic that helps you remember who's who in the family. The extras were not included on my screener DVD so I can't tell you anything else about them.

Austin connection: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a selection during SXSW 2010.