(review of American cut): what a mystery movie should do nowadays- absorb us in and get us set for anything

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2010)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is concerned with its plot, but also, and maybe even more-so than in most American films, with the characters. It's as if the Swedish filmmaker behind the film, by way of the very popular book(s) by Stieg Larsson, doesn't want to compromise anything with the characters for the sake of the story. So the film becomes a balancing act between its themes and its characters, its plot and its persons going through trying to figure out what happened to Harriet Vanger forty years ago. I'm not saying they're the most fully rounded and developed beings in a mystery movie ever, but I'm glad to see that a filmmaker has the guts to put the characters up front for us, particularly the force on the screen in Lisbeth Salander played by Noomi Rapace.
It's her that we're given as the real lead of the story - by the end it feels as if the story, however neat and tidy it might seem (and, perhaps as a slight fault, be it through the cutting of the Swedish version or not, a little too tidy), continues with her and not journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and given perspective. While the story, about the search through the case file closed long ago for the disappearance of Harriet, is engrossing once it really gets going, it's also about women, and the violence done to them. We've seen a killer with this sort of sick method before, of the kind of 'true' evil and hatred that comes out of repression and racism and, yes, inbreeding. But not put into the context of a lead character who, throughout her life leading up to this case she stumbles upon, has had to put up with the worst in men. Really, really bad men.
Indeed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo carries with it a rather nasty undercurrent that may turn off viewers expecting just a mystery story. In its own right it's as hard to take as Silence of the Lambs was for audiences back in 1991, as we're brought in to what sort of frame of mind might do such a thing as kill an innocent girl (or, as we learn, more). But what it is, at the least, is just a plain well-told story. You know the kind, where we're given hero-characters (maybe more flawed here than usual, but still) put to task to find out just what happened. And like a really grisly and humanly ghastly murder mystery as the layers are peeled away it feels ickier, the images of those pictures, those slaughtered girls Harriet alluded to in her notes, appearing before us like ghosts.
If the director exceeds at creating just a bit of mood with his story (and, while a repititious method, the dissolves and super-impositions create a really strong palette visually to draw upon), he also cast his film with some strength. I'm sure just based on this film Rapace doesn't have to worry about a career for a while, and not just in Sweden. I could see her playing as a tough girl in a thriller here in the States, or, just as well, a more vulnerable character as Lisbeth is both (albeit I've yet to see her in anything else, this could work just fine as a calling card showing a multitude of range with the exception of, of course, comedy). Her character is like a cross between a femme fatale and a runaway from life, dangerous and hostile with layers built up to protect herself (and, sometimes, it has to come in handy with horrors like her really sick-f*** new probation officer). On the opposite side of her is a more subtle turn from Nyqvist, who has to be more restrained as he's the more 'normal' character, or with more on his plate (his character is after all being set-up in another case he worked on).
So, the ultimate effect of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that of solid storytelling matched with strong characters. We want to see the characters solve the mystery, as dark and depressing as it gets (and really as lurid as it does too, something David Fincher can work with perhaps in the American remake). While it's not really a 'perfect' thriller or mystery by any stretch - some plot holes, such as why the characters don't take the pictures touched by the intruder fingerprinted when they're so investigative about everything else, or why Lisbeth lets a character go in a crucial scene - it involved me more than I can think of from a mystery-killer movie in a while. I'm sure I'll want to revisit again, if only for that breakthrough performance from that actress, and for some of those impressive visual-story bits with the pictures (watch as they move!)