Dull

Rating: 5/10 (27 October 2012)

Dull as dishwater and kills the meaning and intentions of the book, Stieg Larsson is rolling in his grave. Dull, Dull, Dull...
The book was originally called 'Men Who Hate Women.' Stieg Larsson, the author, was adamant that the name not be change. Sadly he died before he could complain about the renaming of translations. The book is a strong statement about violence against women which is somewhat watered down in favor of more typical cinema.
My biggest problem was how they wrote Lisbeth Salander. In the book at one point, Blomkvist actually thinks she may be some form of high functioning autism, I didn't get that from this Salander. Movie Lisbeth was a girl who had just been hardened by going through a lot of crap and is a bit walled off and lacking social niceties but still has a level of normalcy. Book Lisbeth is exceptionally awkward, even more closed off and much harder, even militant. Blomkvist never finds out Lisbeth is a ward of the state in the first book. In fact Lisbeth would never tell anybody this fact about herself, she is very guarded of this secret. So her laying in bed talking about it with Blomkvist would never have happened. That is a far too normal an interaction for Salander. To make the scene worse, he asks why she's a ward and she tells him about setting her father on fire when she was young. Again, another guarded secret she would never talk about. If you were thinking of reading the books, major spoiler alert, her lighting her daddy ablaze is actually the big reveal at the end of book 2, The Girl who Played with Fire. Another problem is the end scene where Lisbeth asks, "May I kill him?" Some reviewers were disappointed seeing this as Lisbeth being passive to Blomkvist which is a big problem since the book is quite feminist but I didn't see it that way. What I did see was Lisbeth deferring to Blomkvist out of respect: she values Blomkvist more than hunting down Martin. In the book she just says I am going to kill him and takes off before Blomkvist can say a word: killing Martin is more important than anything. While I wanted to understand book Lisbeth, movie Lisbeth drew little intrigue.
They took out how some of Blomkvist's exploits. I wonder how people would have perceived the movie differently if he was shown having an affair with Cecilia Vanger.
The crime story is the plot of the novel but not what drives it. The character's drive the story. The mystery really wasn't that exciting to read about. Since it wasn't that exciting to read about, it was even less interesting to watch. It's just not a riveting story line and not what I took away from the book. The problem is the character's here lacked the depth and complexity to carry the movie as they did in the book. Some of the important character interactions are also cut for the so-so crime story.
The Wennerstrom affair was incomprehensible. We hardly know why Blomkvist got convicted of libel and little insight into him taking down Wennerstrom in the end. Also the tangent where Lisbth stealing billions in Wennerstrom's Kronor is too long and serves little purpose. It could have been done more carefully in far fewer scenes. (Lisbeth asking for the money from Blomkvist and then Blomkvist seeing her on TV in the blond wig (which in the book he sees her on TV, recognizes her and knows she stole the money) would be enough.).
To make the movie work, they needed to be more adept at stream-lining the plot. In the end, it amounted to an incredibly boring movie that was often incomprehensible. Dull, dull, dull, that's all I seem to be able to say about this movie.