Disappointing in comparison to original

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2012)

My wife and I went to see this movie recently, having thoroughly enjoyed the original, but it didn't really stack up very well. First of all, casting an action actor like Daniel Craig in the male lead was unbelievable. In the original, Micke is fairly awkward and Lisbeth is constantly having to bail him out of situations. He is a highly competent detective, but a bit of a nerd when it comes to physical activity.
However, the two main draw backs for this film were the way Lisbeth is portrayed and the fairly wooden and contrived acting throughout. Lisbeth, in the original movies, is a strong, independent and emotionally withdrawn character. She is also quite hard to like, especially in the first film. In this remake, we hardly see her for the first hour and Micke ends up doing most of the detective work himself, whereas Lisbeth actually played a much bigger role, which is pivotal to the plot in the next 2 movies. The remake also implies that Lisbeth acted out of necessity, not out of malice towards certain characters, but her character is not that nice! She hates men who hurt women and goes out of her way to humiliate them. This, again, is essential to her character, especially for the final movie. The remake also develops the relationship between the protagonists too conventionally. In the original, it was a lot less easy for them to trust each other, and Micke actually didn't approve of a lot of Lisbeth's behaviour, whereas he seems to condone it in the remake.
It seems that for the American market to like this film, it had to be sanitised and Lisbeth had to be a bit more cliché and a bit less flawed. Micke also had to be a bit tougher and more masculine. However, one of the great things about the original is that it it turns gender roles on their heads and allows the strongest character to be a woman. Sadly, this remake has reverted to the Hollywood rule that female leads should always be weaker than and subservient to their male counterparts.
Verdict: a well made film with strong visuals, let down by poor characterisation and screenplay, as well as fairly wooden performances.