The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-720P

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-480P

Millennium 1, The Man Who Hate Women is a thriller; but most of all a character study. Explaining what happens will not make any justice and will diminish the lasting feeling after enjoying it. The sad part is that the movie does not seem will have a wide USA release. It will probably be shown in New York and/or Los Angeles in a couple of theatres and as USA people hate reading it will be miserably ignored. It is sad because dumb things like I LOVE YOU MAN, DUPLICITY, THE HANGOVER or any romantic or formulaic movie gets wide release and huge publicity while this master piece; based on a master piece book will be limited to a DVD by the few people with still some cultural knowledge in the country. If this does not bother you; then search for some of the above mentioned movies you will for sure be delighted with.

In Stockholm, the investigative journalist and chief-editor of the magazine Millennium Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is sentenced to three months in prison for slandering the corrupt entrepreneur Hans-Erik Wennerström (Stefan Sauk) in an article. Meanwhile the wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven- Bertil Taube) and his lawyer Dirch Frode (Ingvar Hirdwall) hire the Milton Security to investigate the life of Mikael, and the hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) finds that he is an honest man. Mikael is invited to travel to Hedeby Island near Hedestadt to meet Henrik at his home and the old man proposes him to investigate who murdered his beloved nephew Harriet that disappeared forty years ago. Mikael moves to Hedeby Island and Henrik delivers all the files of the case. The journalist learns that all the members of the dysfunctional Vanger family are suspect and the three brothers of Henrik were Nazis. Meanwhile Lisbeth is hacking Mikael's computer and she decides to help him with further information about the case. Henrik hires Lisbeth to help Mikael and they discover a series of hideous murders connected to the disappearance of Harriet. "Män Som Hatar Kvinnor" is one of the best films of the year. The engaging suspense is very well developed, with many characters and subplots that are perfectly resolved without any flaw. Niels Arden Oplev has a tight direction, supported by an excellent screenplay and outstanding cast. Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace in the roles of an investigative journalist and an emotionally disturbed hacker respectively deserve nominations to the Oscar for their top-notch performances. Unfortunately it seems that the American cinema industry is preparing to destroy this awesome film with another remake. The Brazilian title gives a different meaning since "Män Som Hatar Kvinnor" means "Men Who Hate Women". My vote is ten. Title (Brazil): "Os Homens Que Não Amavam as Mulheres" ("The Men that did not Love Women") Note: On 14 July 2018 I saw this film again.

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.

I basically enjoyed this film, as reflected in my rating but it is certainly flawed. My preconception before watching the film, based upon the images of the main character, was that this was quite possibly a film that gets a lot of it's traction from the beauty of it's female star - dressed up in that Gothic she's-a-bit-disturbed kind of Matrix chic. I was pleasantly surprised that the eponymous character does actually have some depth, and didn't have me groaning at tank grrrl clichés too often. The film then heads off into what seem to me kind of interesting waters and is gearing up to be intelligent, well-paced, suspenseful and unconventional. The problems arise when the film starts tying the mysteries up. The kind of devices that you would dismiss in a TV drama as being clichés, start surfacing with alarming regularity... It becomes more difficult to suspend your credibility... Things take on an increasingly BBC 2 Poirot kind of feel. Then when you feel that the story has been told, the film continues for another unnecessary 20 minutes or so, most of that time spent spelling things out in a slightly patronising way.. The final scene seems well and truly out of place. People may say that "if you read the book it all makes sense"... Maybe, but this isn't the book, and the film needs to stand on it's own two feet. So I would say this is half a good film, and half a late night TV murder mystery. Worth seeing but doesn't live up to the hype in my opinion.

I'm at a loss. The book was so dull I couldn't finish it, and decided to watch the movie instead to discover the 'amazing' characters and 'gripping' plot everyone's talking about. I can't work out whodunit in an episode of Miss Marple, but even I was ahead of the protagonists. The thought that this was a murder mystery that had flummoxed the greatest brains in Sweden for 40 years was laughable. Clunky plot, ridiculous clues, convenient misidentifications - this has got the lot. The only things I can see that mark this film/book out as being in the slightest bit different from average TV-movie fare is the completely gratuitous sex scenes. I'm not the kind of person who says 'I'm no prude but...' BUT The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like a middle-aged man's nasty sex fantasies mixed with humdrum missing persons case. It even features that most pathetic of * titillations - the lesbian who only really needs a good man to convert her (and presumably to get her to leave her live-in girlfriend who's completely disposable, of course). By the end, the edgy, rather ugly, punky lesbo Lisbeth is even transformed by a blonde wig, spiky shoes and some golden backlighting. Presumably so that the plain-as-a-potato saggy hero has a PROPER trophy for all his daring journalism. Effing dire. On top of that it's packed full of clichés and cardboard cut-out characters. The much touted Lisbeth Salander is vaguely interesting until she decides randomly to have sex with the hero - a decision so out of character for a lesbian abuse victim that it would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting. I couldn't watch this film without thinking of the millions of people who have been conned into thinking they are reading/watching some kind of breakthrough master of crime at work. I also couldn't help thinking that I'm happy Stieg Larsson is dead so he can't profit from his tedious claptrap. A really unlikeable film, and I despair for the world.

This Swedish film is one of the best thrillers I've seen in a long time. Based on a best seller novel by Stieg Larsson I haven't read (the first in a trilogy), it starts with Mikael, a middle aged investigative journalist being asked by the old patriarch of a powerful business clan to solve the disappearance of his beloved 16 year old nephew forty years ago. Since this happened during a family reunion at an isolated island, the patriarch believes that she was murdered, and that only a member of the family could have done so. Mikael is soon joined in the investigation by Lisbeth Salander, a troubled but brilliant twenty something female hacker, and soon they are lifting the veil on the very dark secrets behind this prestigious family. Gripping throughout, the film benefits from a number of terrific performances, especially Noomi Rapace playing Lisbeth Salander and Sven Bertil Taube as the patriarch of the clan. While the film is more than two hours long, it is never boring, and all the loose ends are tied brilliantly at the end.

My brother and I were late for this movie, so we only got to see the audience when the lights went back on. I'd describe it as above 50. The reason is probably that this is not your average Hollywood murder movie. It has most of the elements that thrillers of this kind have. Clue by clue you are lead to the murderer, but the answer is only revealed at the end. Where is movie differs from most common thrillers is that characters are described more realistically, without certain bounds that most movies seem to have. This adds to the intensity of 'Men who hate women'. This intense detective has some interesting twists, and should be quite enjoyable for most adults.