thomas4cinema

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist gets in a tangle with an industrialist, and ends up being framed and jailed. After his release, he receives an offer to help the old head of the Vanger family clear up the unresolved disappearance of his daughter many years ago. He ensures the help of Lisbeth Salander, a hacker and punk and abused loner. Together, they move onto the lonely family island, amidst the snow and cold of Sweden’s countryside.
I am not too much a fan of the new Scandinavian wave of crime literature, but I always was fond of their movies. There is the pleasant desolation and boredom of the wide landscape, there are characters that very often are happy with a lot and isolation and solitude, there is the pleasant sound of boots crunching on snow. Same here: a lot of loners, a lot of boots on snow, and a lot of wide landscape. There is not too much about the story (serial killer?) and there is the problem with a back-story for Lisbeth that seems rather out of place and free of context (I assume that this is important for readers of the voluminous book, and for sustaining her character – taken this as a stand-alone movie, the story of her abuse through those who are supposed to protect her is distracting and unnecessary). Bot both main characters Mikael and Lisbeth are interesting and unconventional enough to make the viewer care, so the side characters including all the villains do not matter so much. An interesting and sometimes thrilling crime story evolves that surely will hold up through a couple of more installments.