There's nothing quite as potent as a rape-revenge tale. And even more potent than a man taking revenge on behalf of a woman is a woman avenging her own rape. Perhaps this is why Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy has dominated the best seller list for so long. The trilogy (which, full disclosure, I haven't read, although I've seen all of the original Swedish films based on the books) would be nothing special without the character of Lisbeth Salander. Salander, a tiny, anti-social, goth-punk computer hacker is perfect fodder for our culture's weird fantasies about sex and violence. Salander is titillating enough to be a sex object (she's slim, bisexual, sexually aggressive), but also bad-ass enough to fulfill our love of eye-for-an-eye revenge fantasies.
There has been much ado made about Larsson's trilogy and it's relationship towards women and feminism. According to both Wikipedia and Larsson's long time partner, Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson witnessed a gang rape of a young woman when he was 15 years old. This incident caused a deep, lifelong disgust of violence and abuse toward women and was an influence on his writing. In fact, the original Swedish title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was "Men Who Hate Women". The novel is peppered with statistics about rape and assault of women in Larsson's native Sweden. All this would mark Larsson as a feminist. However, others find the focus on rape and torture of women in his novels distasteful at best and exploitative at worst--basically, "rape as entertainment". I, however, fall into the camp that believes Larsson was a feminist. You can find brutal depictions of violence against women in any number of thrillers and murder mysteries--many written by women. It seems to me that Stieg Larsson, whether or not he accomplished his goal, was at least trying to make a political statement about the way women are seen and treated in his country and in the world.
That background aside, David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is a very good, very atmospheric, and incredibly violent film with one major flaw which I will discuss below. If you liked the original Swedish film, you probably won't be *too* offended at the changes Fincher makes in his adaptation. And if you like Fincher's other films and are able to stomach a lot of violence (against both men and women), you'll find this film as thrilling, edgy, and elegant as his other films.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follows the plot of the original film very closely and steamlines the many subplots. The main story concerns Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a disgraced journalist hired by a rich and powerful old man to solve an old family mystery. As Blomkvist looks into the history of the powerful Vanger family, he uncovers some extremely dark family secrets--and find himself uncomfortably close to a man who is a serial torturer/rapist/killer of women.
The subplot, which gets just as much screen time as the main plot, is about Salander, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo--a genius computer hacker who is also a ward of the state because of a violent crime she committed as a child. When her state-appointed guardian begins to take advantage of her sexually, culminating in a distressingly violent rape scene, Salander fights back and take revenge in a brutal way--though arguably less brutal than what she had to undergo.
The two plots come together when Blomkvist seeks out Salander to help him with his research. Together, the two are able to discover not only what happened to the missing niece at the center of the Vanger family mystery, but to find a killer of women who is still at large. Of course, they risk their lives doing so.
This brings me to the biggest beef I had with Fincher's adaptation of the story:
Spoilers!
In the original movie (I can't speak for what happens in the book), Salander has sex one night with Blomkvist. She goes into his room, ravishes him, and goes back to her own room. End of story. No romance, no pining. The two have a mainly platonic relationship of mutual respect throughout the trilogy of films.
In the American version, Salander begins to kinda sorta fall in love (or at least get emotionally close) to Blomkvist. Her attachment is expressed in a number of scenes. For example, she makes him breakfast after they spend the night together. Later, she buys him a leather jacket and when she goes to give it to him, sees him with his longtime girlfriend and becomes visibly distressed. I found Salander's attachment to Blomkvist to be complete baloney. Salander would never make a man (or woman) breakfast after spending the night with them. And the character is often described as anti-social to the point of being nearly autistic. I highly doubt she would get a schoolgirl crush on a man she was working with. Then again, maybe Fincher's adaptation is truer to the book. But it seemed very pandering to an American audience that expects (heterosexual) romance to bloom at the drop of a hat.
That complaint aside, Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an excellent, elegant thriller with beautiful cinematography, a killer (no pun intended) soundtrack, and great acting. If you can stomach the violence, it's worth seeing.
4.5 out of 5 stars
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