An adaptation of an apparent dime-store cheapie masquerading
as important literature, The Girl with
the Dragon Tattoo is overflowing with faux-titillating elements, from
lesbianism and rape to S&M-themed sexual violence and murder. Nazis also
play a key role in this cinematic version of the first novel in deceased
Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy,” though unlike kindred
best-seller phenom The Da Vinci Code,
this tale is less about fancifully rewriting history than merely indulging in
exploitation-fiction devices. After being disgraced and ordered to serve three
months in jail, crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is
hired by a wealthy industrialist to unravel the mystery of his beloved niece,
who disappeared without a trace forty years earlier. This investigation
ultimately pairs him with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a bisexual computer
hacker – and laughably contrived wannabe badass goth antihero – whose
piercings, tattoos and jet black hair and matching apparel all speak to her
traumatic past and painful present, which involves being raped by her scummy
legal guardian. Their joint mission results in personal and professional
redemption, though not before director Niels Arden Oplev’s film can revel in
its seedier aspects – scenes of abuse are shot with commercial-slick
graphicness and more than one eye toward arousing rather than horrifying – while appropriating every aesthetic trope from the modern
Hollywood thriller handbook. Larsson and Oplev clearly intend their genre material
to double as some sort of statement on male brutality towards women, but the
proceedings’ omnipresent luridness negates any such intentions, reducing the
whodunit action to merely low-grade suspense rubbish.
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