Porn for critics (some minor spoilers)

Rating: 2/10 (28 July 2010)

There is certain view regarding European cinema as sophisticated and intellectual. So on one side is the high art - i.e. European cinema, on the other - commercial hot-dog avatars shoot in the US of A. It is sometimes true, sometimes not, but as a consequence both the audience and critics seems to look at European production already expecting some artistry to be there. Sometimes there is some art there indeed but more then often there isn't much, and "The girl with a dragon tattoo" here is unfortunately an example of the more common case. The problem is, once the critic gets into this "state of expectation" it's sort of easy to fool her or him with a lousy and pseudo-artsy movie.
One thing is good in this otherwise very mediocre production - the pictures by Jens Fisher and Eric Kress. The way they shoot light on snow is remarkable and to them I am truly grateful since otherwise I would have totally lost 150 minutes of my life. The storyline is 100% cliché, how many movies about psychotic killers hiding between rich have we seen? How many about revenge for personal issues? How many mixing these two threads? How very original. About the ultra right twist - there are much better Swedish books - yes, mystery too - dealing with this subject: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote some of the really good ones already in the 60's.
Neither is "The girl" a good mystery. If you force yourself into paying attention , if you somehow managed to focus, the answer to the puzzle is blatantly revealed in about 1/3 of the movie, then you just get bored and irritated looking at both heroes playing really dumb. One of the reason why you wouldn't want to pay attention is rather poor acting, especially from Noomi Rapace, not that Michael Nyqvist is much butter - just watch him jogging, probably his best acting in the whole movie, The other reason - the movie is unnecessary looooong, mostly due to some really gross scenes that carry zero importance for the main plot but effectively change the genre from mystery into something close to exploitation, gore-shock films. "The girl" pretends to be sort of realistic flick, the same way Mou Tun Fei's "Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre" does, and just the same there are people that have a taste for it (or to be precise, a lack of taste whatsoever). Shall the rape and torture scenes be cut off, the audience would get a decent, forgettable mystery, a bit below the original Swedish Wallander series; the way it is we got some pretentious, boring BS, with scenes that can excite only some poor, tormented souls. Oh, and let us not forget about the glorious epilogue, honestly, how low it can go?
One last thing - I use the term "porn" the way Eco ones defined - if for the most of the movie the viewer is just waiting for sth to happen while watching boring stuff, this is definitely a porn movie.