The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009)

I was intending to watch this at some point in the future but a relative was forcing me to watch it so I put him out of his misery and watched it. However, when I did watch it, I thought it was absolutely amazing and I loved it from the start to the end. I was tempted to watch a dubbed English version of the film but it really was a lot better watching it in original language Swedish despite it had subtitles. It feels a lot more real and, quite frankly, I understood the film a bit more too. Apart from films by the Americans, British and Australians (well, foreign language films), I have always thought that the Swedes make the best films but after this, Let The Right One In, The Seventh Seal and a few others, I really think they are simply the best. In the near future and when reading about Swedish (and maybe other Scandinavian films such as Danish, Norwegian or Finnish) films that have been done in the past (such as films by the late Ingmar Bergman), I'll definitely watch the supposed best ones of that country!

There were so many great qualities that this had but, personally there was one weakness that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had and that was that it wasn't completely as intense as comments suggested like on the DVD or in reviews that I have read. Or maybe they possibly found even the investigation scenes tense the most when there was one or two edge-of-seat scenarios in the film. There was some shocking moments in the film, though, especially when involved sexual violence and other references in similarity to it.

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves. 

Michael Nyqvist was great as Mikael Blomkvist (both his real name and character names are very similar, aren't they?)! Nyqvist showed us a kind of character that we have seen time and time again. What I mean by this is that we see this detective on a mission to solve a mystery of someone who has gone missing and has a deep but rather disturbing story behind it so that is a frequent dialogue in crime films. Noomi Rapace was simply outstanding in this film and she was simply robbed of an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actress! It would have probably been at the 84th Academy Awards for the films in 2010 despite The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is really a 2009 film. Her character seems like one of those young women who does look quite a dodgy young woman when you first see her as well as incredibly sexy, she is a troubled young woman with a traumatic past and has a dark story behind it. I really don't know what to make of Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara (who appeared in another David Fincher film The Social Network and also the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street) as these two leading roles in the Hollywood upcoming remake.

After only one film seen from him, Niels Arsen Oplev is a great director already and it is unfortunate that he only directed this one and notThe Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. He directed it a bit like David Fincher did in Zodiac, James Wan inSaw and Jonathan Demme in The Silence Of The Lambs with the very intense scenes and rather graphically violent and/or scary background settings. Unfortunately, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo didn't receive recognition at the Oscars or Golden Globes but it did win Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTA Awards and rightly so! Rapace was nominated Best Actress and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. I sometimes hate how biased the American Academy really can be towards films that aren't in the English language because on occasions those films are better than some of the films that Hollywood release.

Overall, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is without a single doubt, one of the best films of 2009/2010, one of the most underrated films ever and is another great film that the Swedes can add to their successful films list. The sequels will have to do pretty damn hard to beat this one! It certainly is a fantastic start to a series and had a teasing ending like The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring did apart from the entire Millennium trilogy are all out on DVD now so that's good. Also, I am now looking forward to the Hollywood remake (or their own version) now which is directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The Social Network) after this fantastic film!