Good Film Verison of the Hit Novel

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2010)

Usually I like to read the book first before watching the movie. In this case, reading the book first made watching the movie easier, but also made the experience a bit disappointing.
I liked the way the screenplay adapted the book onto the big screen. This movie ran for over two hours, so that most of the important events in the novel are all accounted for. There were some details which were altered for cinematic purposes, but that was also OK, since it fits right into the story without altering major plot points.
In the book, more pages were spent on journalist Mikael Blomkvist, the movie, on the other hand, gives practically equal, or even more, time to Lisbeth Salander, the pale thin Gothic female computer hacker with a disturbed past, facial piercings and the dragon tattoo, who helps Blomkvist solve the mystery of Harriet Vanger, who disappeared more than 20 years ago. Actress Noomi Rapace portrays the titular character Lisbeth bravely and with conviction.
I say I was also disappointed in a way that having read the book cannot make me a fair judge whether the movie was able to effectively build up the suspense into the revelation of what really happened. The movie, though not exactly how I imagined some things, is a very faithful retelling of the book's events, no surprises. I am thinking maybe I should watch the 2nd movie first before reading the 2nd book, and see how that goes.