Can't Wait to Compare

Rating: 9/10 (19 October 2010)

The Swedish version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is so good that it presents a serious challenge to the forthcoming American remake. It's difficult to imagine that Rooney Mara (whom I've never seen in anything) can compare with Noomi Rapace as the damaged, violent, brilliant computer hacker who is as much at the center of the movie as the lead male, Michael Nyqvist (playing Mikael Blomkvist, the temporarily disgraced journalist employed to determine what happened many years previously to the young niece of a wealthy industrialist),
It will also be interesting to see how Hollywood handles the violent and explicit sex scenes that go much beyond anything Hollywood has shown as well as the gore that is as savage as any I've seen in a film not about the Holocaust. Don't wait for the American film to see the Swedish version. It's exceptional.
Having seen the American version, I can now say that the Swedish version is much better, largely due to the performance of Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. However, Mikael Blomkvist is also better than Daniel Craig. There is nothing remotely Swedish about Craig -- and this is a story which takes place in Sweden. As to the sex scenes, they are not QUITE as violent and explicit as in the Swedish film, but they come close enough. However, the American film has another serious defect. It simplifies the complicated plot of the novel and, in doing so, makes some things obscure that are perfectly clear in the Swedish film. I regard that as a loss.
I wonder the other two films in the trilogy will also be duplicated in the U.S. and, if so, how close they will come to Stieg Larsson's achievement.