Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) by Pegasus — 10 Jan 2012

I thought this was a very well made film. Fastest 2 and a half hours I've ever spent at the movies. Funny, the book is too slow, and the film may be a little too fast. I understand why, because the paperback of the book runs at 600+ pages. But I think I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't read the book beforehand. The narrative suffered a little in my opinion. I wish the whole libel case subplot could have been even more condensed than it was, so as to leave more time to develop the central mystery. I felt that section of the story lost some impact, especially the final revelation of what happened to Harriet. (Then again, it fell rather flat in the book as well.).

The leads were excellent, especially Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. Very convincing. Because of having to fit everything into feature length, most of the secondary characters were not too well developed. This really hurt in terms of suspense at the movie's climax. There was only one character with enough screen time to be the culprit (if you hadn't already guessed him just from the camera shots of his house in its dominant, isolated position). One problem I had was that the dialogue was sometimes very hard to pick up. Either the actors were mumbling or the background sound was too high.

Especially given the unwieldiness of the source material, it's a very good film. I haven't seen the Swedish original yet. Oh, someone was angry that they gave Blomqvist a daughter. That was done by the author, and her film role is pretty much what her role was in the novel.