Sunday, May 20, 2012

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo



Last weekend I finally watched the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I read all of the books a few years ago and really liked them, so I was looking forward to seeing the movie. A brief synopsis in case you haven’t read the first book: Mikael is a somewhat troubled journalist who is hired by a wealthy family to investigate a 40-year old murder. Lisbeth is a tattooed, pierced, dressed-in-all-black girl who is locked into Sweeden’s childcare system even though she has been taking care of herself for a long time. She’s also an incredibly smart computer hacker who helps Mikael in his investigation. That’s the premise for the first book.

I thought Lisbeth’s character was a bit over the top, but Rooney Mara did a great job acting. The rest of the characters were pretty much as I thought, except for her case worker. I didn’t expect him to be so fat. There were certain things I didn’t want to see…I think you know which parts I mean when I say I turned away. I also didn’t think all the sex scenes were needed, but I know the book was fairly descriptive and I understand it does play a part in character development. I found it hard to keep track of all the family members. The book goes into detail about all of them and the murderer was unpredictable. I thought the movie was much more obvious.

My opinion of the movie was solid and it stuck to the book from what I can remember. People who saw the movie but didn’t read the book really liked the movie (from what I’ve been told). I’m somewhat surprised the movie was a flop at the box office, but my guess is it was too dark and sadistic to have the appeal of something like The Hunger Games. I came to the conclusion that the second and third books were way better than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I wonder if they will make the second movie or not. Hmmm….

[Note: I never wrote a post about the book series because I read them before I started the blog.]

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