Movie Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This is the second trailer for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." The first trailer showed a series of clip, a fraction of a second each, with words from the title thrown in. You had no idea what the movie was about. Since I'm one of the few people who haven't read anything in this series it was rather annoying.

The most important thing to know is that this movie is very, very rated R. Not rated X. Rated R with an R big enough that Stephen Hawking wrote his thesis on it. The book was brutal (I'm told) and they didn't pull back for the movie version. Nudity, yes, a fair amount of that. Probably more than you'd want to see in a movie you're watching with your parents. And then unblinking scenes of sexual abuse and rape. She does, however, get payback. Just not when you're expecting it if you're unfamiliar with the story.

The trailer I used above does a good job of telling what the movie is about without giving it all away. Our hero, a journalist of Woodward and Bernstein mentality, has just lost a case where he trusted the wrong informant. He needs to get away from things. Some millionaire hires him to investigate what happened to the relative who vanished back in the '60s. After some time he decides he needs some help and hires the girl who investigated him for the millionaire.

She's broken on many different levels. Socially she's rude and surly. She may have trouble knowing right from wrong, or she just might not care. It's hard to blame her as you learn more about how she grew up. But she has managed to turn her damage to her advantage. She's a pretty good hacker and a great investigator with as close as you can realistically get to a photographic memory. And god help you if she feels you've wronged her.

It was a great movie. I liked it a lot. Well, except for those excessively graphic bits. I will be seeing the next one and the original Swedish version. I'll probably get the audio book version, too. And that of the other books in the series. On DVD? Maybe. I'll see what mood I'm in when it comes out. But probably eventually.