The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: (Blu Ray) Film adaptation of the eponymous novel – follows an investigative journalist and a computer hacker as they investigate a 40 year old disappearance, which in turn unearths much bigger crimes. The one thing that grabs you for the duration is the performances offered up by the cast, particularly the two mains: Rapace is great at portraying an enigmatic character, who is strong and smart, yet damaged and vulnerable; Nyqvist on the other hand effortlessly portrays a determined journalist and dedicated researcher with incorruptible morals. Mains aside, nobody else really drops the ball either and the strong cast definitely make the film more believable, engaging and gripping. As for the story, you’ve seen it a thousand times before, but never done like this: it’s essentially a Miss Marple ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery served up with a huge wedge of modernity – metro setting, bit of snuff, bit of action, bit of romance, and lots of graphic scenes & descriptions of terrible crimes – add to this a bunch of critiques (violence against women, corrupt big business, modern Sweden…) and you have a very busy film. My favourite aspect of Dragon Tattoo is how the story’s told – it obviously helps to have great source material – but the direction is outstanding, and no matter how hard it gets to watch, or how long it goes on for, you simply can’t stop watching. My only major nitpick was the constant flashbacks as everything else about the film batted a lot higher. The BD picture is decent enough but typical Scandinavian washed out bleak pallet means that nothing really jumps out – sound again is alright, but nothing special. The final product is a modern facelift of the classic murder mystery that continually makes you wince, yet keeps you hooked through to the very last scene
Score: 8/10
Paragraph Film Reviews 
I saw this film in theaters, but I loved it so much that I may revisit it on Blu-ray. It would also serve as a good refresher before the third film comes out this fall.
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I thought this was fairly boring and would have preferred it if it focused on Salander’s story instead of the murder mystery. I generally like that kind of serial killer stuff, but I didn’t think it was handled all that well here.
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I really enjoyed this one because, as you’ve written, it was able to take stuff we’ve seen before and weaved something that was thrilling, sometimes unexpected, and consistently fascinating. I also liked it because with each piece of evidence that was revealed, my guess for the identity of the murder changed.
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I really like this movie, looking forward to read the book.
I refuse to watch the remake as Hollywood always sucks in remaking.
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