Of course I have never read the books, but also have I never seen the original film trilogy. I want to see them, but their lengths (all over 2,5 hours) hold me back. Then when we thought ‘what the hell’, our video on demand did not have the Swedish films, but the remake of the first part. No problem, because what a great film this is! This is certainly the best thriller that I have seen in some time. Scandinavian thrillers always tend to be nicely dark and gloomy so there may still be a reason to watch the original some time, but Fincher seems to have remained close the to original by not moving the story to the USA and using Swedish names. There are actually two stories (or three depending if one comes back in the second part). The troubled journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Graig) is asked to look into an old family scandal for which he is invited to an island where only this family lives. Then there is the story of the girl from the title, the violent Lisbeth Salander. These two stories come together in the film. The trouble of Blomkvist is not entirely clear to me, but he wrote something about a big company based on bogus sources and the company sues him and his employer. This story is not a big part of the film, but perhaps it comes back lateron in the trilogy.
The story is original and the film watches like reading a book. The atmosphere is good and the story unfolds in a nice, slow pace. There is none of the obligatory blazing action, but a story. The Lisbeth part and the end are a bit overdone, but a modern film needs some violence Fincher may have thought (or the author of the books). The wonderfull soundtrack is from Trent Reznor, so the NIN shirt in the beginning is doubly funny. Indeed, a good film so perhaps I now need to watch another five 2,5+’s…
