"Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck": The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

First of all: Why isn't the movie shown here yet? Wait, don't answer that.

Not for the faint-hearted

I read the books a couple of months before the movie came out in the US so I was SO excited for the movie. The first half of the book was a lot of financial mumbo-jumbo I had to read multiple times before I could actually get it but straight after that, WHOOSH. Finished all 3 books in 2 weeks. And yes, I've got the Swedish version of the movies too, I just never got around to watching them. 


So...back to the movie. I just filched a mini summary off of IMDb to start things off.

"Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for forty years by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a young computer hacker."

Sexy bespectacled Bond is sexy. 

Sounds simple enough. Not. The movie is, in actual fact, one hell of a roller-coaster ride with plenty of violent twists and brutal turns to churn the contents of your stomach into repulsive acid. Someone stop me before I exaggerate even more. 


The movie is about 2 hours and 38 minutes long and I think it's wonderfully paced (I don't know about non-readers, but hey, David Fincher did not read them either and HE MADE THE FRICKIN' MOVIE). I mean, yeah, it got a little confusing when (SPOILER ALERT) Mikael and Lisbeth started rattling off the Leviticus verses and their corresponding murders (SPOILER END) but other than that, I had no problems with keeping up with the plot. 

Obviously, I didn't make this myself. [Source]

The film's opening sequence, an abstract tar-and-ooze 3-D animation of sorts, was amazing; beautifully haunting yet bizarrely brutal at the same time, thanks in part to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' version of 'The Immigrant Song'. The soundtrack is amazing, as anyone would expect from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (they won an Oscar for Best Original Score with The Social Network). Also, did anyone notice the hornets and flying dragons amidst the sculpted melting faces? Foreshadowing, guys. AW YEAH. 
Note: Someone's posted it up on YouTube here. GO SEE IT.

"I want you to help me catch a killer of women."

Daniel Craig was surprisingly...normal, I half-expected him to start shooting back when someone shot at him in the woods, and it was weirdly amusing when he began to whine about the bullet wound. Until Lisbeth decided to shut him up (weirdly good chemistry, by the way). The movie has quite a strong cast; there's Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music! That was so long ago!), Yorick van Wageningen and of course, Rooney 'thank-God-she-got-cast-as-Lisbeth-Salander' Mara. 

"Hold still, you f***ing pussy. Stop whining."

Rooney Mara brought the character to life with a perfect balance of intelligence, insanity and the straightforward, deadpan charm that is Lisbeth Salander. And man, is she tough. I especially loved it when she beat up the guy who stole her laptop and ran off just in time to get into the train. Talk about perfect timing. 

It's supposed to move. But the picture's not moving! 

(MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) But no one wants to know that. Everyone wants to know what went down in the infamous rape scene and the retaliation that followed. It was brutal, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. But I really respect the guy who played Bjurman. It must be so traumatizing (I heard he locked himself in his hotel room and cried for an entire day after shooting that scene, that poor man)! The retaliation is equally horrible, okay? The tattoo...the frickin' huge dildo and when she kicked that thing into his ass, OH MY GOD...I can't even talk about it without feeling a virtual pain in those regions. Owww. (SPOILER END)

From this...

What I love about Rooney Mara is how she gave Lisbeth Salander a kind of quiet sadness behind the tough exterior. Like, when she was waiting in the hospital coz her guardian had a stroke. In the train, all curled up. When she saw Mikael and Erika hugging and shit and she threw his gift into the trash and sped away on her bike. My poor shipper heart!   

...to this. Um. Okay. 

The book didn't really focus a lot on the emotional aspect of things (it was a lot of technical stuff and long-winded explanations, albeit useful to the plot) and I have a one-track mind, I don't over-analyze shit, I just read 'em. Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander exactly as I had imagined her to be. Noomi Rapace was too tall and womanly for Salander, to be honest.


Also, I gotta give props to whoever did the editing. I'm not one for technicality and stuff but the way the scenes inter-cut (SPOILER ALERT) to and fro between Mikael and Lisbeth when it dawned upon them who the serial murderers were (SPOILER END) was really clever, okay? There wasn't much dialogue, you have to actually concentrate and focus, it doesn't make you another product of the idiot box. Also, the flashback scenes were beautifully done, especially when Blomkvist was reading through the case files. 
Update: The guys who did the editing won an Oscar. =D

Shit's about to go down.

So, all in all, I'd probably give this movie...9 out of 10. I'm not giving it that because I loved the books and biased or anything. No, seriously, go watch it, especially if you have not read the books. It sucks when you already know what's going to happen next, coz all you do is watch it go down. So, when something shocking happens, you just go...meh. Not fun. 

WATCH IT.