OK, I have never read the books (either the original ones by Stieg Larsson or continuing ones done by other authors) and I have only seen the first Swedish film and it’s remake by David Fincher (by the way I think Fincher’s version is better) so I really can’t call myself a fan of the Millennium books. I didn’t have any real expectations going into this new film. What attracted me was that it was directed by Fede Alvarez who directed the awesome Evil Dead remake and 2016’s surprisingly good Don’t Breathe. That was enough to get me into to seeing it and you know what? I liked it quite a bit.
From the trailers, it looked to me like it would kind of be another story where Lisbeth Salander (played this time by Claire Foy) along with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played this time by Sverrir Gudnason) are working to uncover a mystery that surrounds really bad men hurting women or anyone else and our two protagonists looking for a way to solve it. This new film does have a mystery but surprisingly this one deals with the theft of a certain nuclear missile launcher program which would cause our heroes and an NSA Agent named Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) to get the program back and rescue the son of the designer of the program (played by Stephen Merchant). The father wants it destroyed and the son needs to be kept safe as the father designed the way to open it based on how his son thinks.
The major thing that I liked in the film was the relationship between Lisbeth and the son who is named August. He seems to be on the high end of the autism spectrum and since Lisbeth seems to be on the same level with him, she develops a kind of kinship with him through talking to him and playing with (and beaten by) him at chess. She also goes out of her way to recover him from the group called The Spiders who kidnap him to get access to the program. I liked this because from what I have seen from the series that it seems primarily focused on Lisbeth avenging the wrongs done to women by evil men that it’s a bit of a change of pace for her to help other kinds of people. Now I could be wrong that this is a new for her as I have never read or seen anything else in the series, but it was a pretty cool thing to seen Lisbeth do. I also liked that the story (sorry, no spoilers) also deals with a piece of Lisbeth’s past that comes back to bite her. I have always seen Lisbeth as a bit of a mystery and shedding light on some (not all of course) of it is always welcome in my book.
I also liked the action in the film. Well…OK apart from one sequence involving Lisbeth fighting off guys in gas masks which was too frenetic, the action was exciting, well-paced and didn't feel excessive. Even if some of the characters (such as Blomkvist and the villain played by Sylvia Hoeks) didn’t get as much screen time as I would have liked, the performances were convincing and didn’t see a bad one at all. I especially thought Claire Foy did a fine job as Lisbeth. In fact, I think she and Rooney Mara fit the role more than Noomi Rapace in the original Swedish version as I always thought Rapace looked a bit too old for the role. But hey that’s just me. The film looks great to look at and appears to take its visual cues from David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’m not really complaining about that since what Fincher put forth really worked for the US version. It’s not quite the same of course but I could see the similarities in many areas. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Right?
There are two other things I didn’t like. Some of the expert computer hacking tricks that Lisbeth pulls off in the film come off as kind of dumb since she seems to be able to do them at any point at the drop of a hat. I understand she is very good at it but she uses it so much that she gets out of more than a few danger’s with ease. It just comes off as a bit too convenient. There is also some lingering resentment that Lisbeth has toward Mikael reporting on her family in his magazine that I wish was expounded upon more.
I have to admit that this writing about this one was tough due to my unfamiliarity with the franchise. I really did just watch this one as a more casual viewer and enjoyed this one purely on its own. It is entirely possible that I would feel differently about this movie to the point of disliking it if I were to start reading the books and see this movie again. From what I am seeing, fans and critics don’t seem to be too happy with this one. But I was entertained, and I would recommend this one along with the David Fincher film. I enjoyed it more than the Grinch…just sayin’.
