Grim but absorbing

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2010)

This is a grim and gritty tale lightened somewhat by an upbeat ending. Its origins as the first novel in the millennium series by Stieg Larrson is evident in a somewhat meandering storyline and a running time of two and a half hours, with the inevitable excisions from the book. Nevertheless the film stands up well on its own.
Sweden seems to produce detectives at the end of their tethers, "Wallander" for example, and the protagonist here, Mikael a journalist, starts out facing three months in jail for defaming a shonky business tycoon. I thought criminal defamation was a thing of the past, but not it seems in Sweden. Mikael has been set up, but the case has brought him to the notice of Henrick Vander, the patriarch of an old industrial family, who commissions Mikael to investigate the disappearance of his favourite niece, who disappeared from the family's island retreat nearly 40 years ago. Mikael joins forces with the tiny but intimidating Lisbeth, an ace computer hacker with a dark past and an agenda of her own.
They soon discover that the Vander family, except for their client who is a nice old gent, are as about a dysfunctional a family as you might ever meet, on a par with the Essenbecks of Visconti's "The Damned". There are skeletons everywhere, not just in the closet. However Mikael and Lisbeth crack the case, after the usual quota of menacing moments and dashing around chasing red herrings and actual clues. Filmed in the midst of a Swedish winter the atmosphere is pretty gloomy, not to mention just plain cold.
Michael Nyqvist inhabits the role of Mikael pretty comfortably, spending quite a lot of time looking surprised, but Nooni Rapace as Lisbeth is something else again – practically an elemental force – never was someone so vulnerable and so dangerous at the same time.
Nit-pickers will be delighted to learn that in a short sequence set in outback northern Australia, Mikael's FWD has the correct licence plates and its steering wheel on the right. However the lighting was most peculiar and the sheep a bit out of place – you mostly see cattle in northern Australia.
There are apparently two sequels in the pipeline, and despite some rather grisly moments I will line up to see them. Larrson, who died suddenly after producing three best-sellers, was a good storyteller and the film-makers have executed the adaptation with plenty of skill.