There are so many great detective novels and so few movie adaptations, that I’m glad to see one this good. The Girl With Dragon Tattoo (Men Who Hate Women in the original Swedish) tells the story of a blacklisted journalist(Michael Nyqvist) and a young gothic hacker(Noomi Rapace) attempting to solve a 40-year-old murder of the daughter of one of the wealthy Vanger brothers. As the story unravels you find that the Lisbeth, Noomi Rapace’s character, has great justification for her interest in the case and utter loathing of men. I don’t want to give away too much of the storyline, but there is one powerful scene worth mentioning. Lisbeth is under custody of a guardian due to violent tendencies when she was younger. Her new guardian is a creep who forces her first to give him a blowjob in exchange for access to her bank accounts (he, being her guardian, controls her money). Later, she goes to his apartment armed with a hidden camera and catches him on tape beating her, strapping her to a bed and brutally raping her. As payback, she comes back, ties him up, shoves a dildo up his ass, and leaves the recording of his rape playing on the television in the room. Needless to say, she gained unlimited access to her funds.  This girl is one bad motherfucker, in the best since of the phrase, and she is reason enough to watch this movie. It may just be that I don’t pay much attention to Swedish film, but this girl really hasn’t done anything notable before this, and she is one of the most impressive female protagonists I’ve seen in quite some time. It will be interesting to see Carrie Mulligan play her in the American version of the film. She’s actually perfect for the role physically, but I’m not sure she can play such a strong female role since her awkwardness is what made her so adorable in An Education. I’m looking forward to watching the next two in this series over the next couple days.

I plan to write a more all-encompassing review of the whole trilogy once I’ve seen the other two movies, so for now, I apologize for not including much of the plot in this.

A+