[Gurdur]

I have blogged about the new movie, the filming of "The Girl With THe Dragon Tattoo" (the Swedish title being, "Män som hatar kvinnor", which according to my non-existant Swedish means "The Man Who Hated Women"), most urgently here, but also here, and I have blogged about the book (authored by Stieg Larsson) as well.

Now the film has been dubbed in German and commercially released in Germany, under the German title "Verblendung" (it did have one showing in Britain, dubbed in English), and will have one showing tomorrow (Saturday) and on Sunday in the USA, again having being dubbed in English. I doubt there will be a commercial release as it stands of the dubbed film in the USA, for a couple of reasons which I detail in this review, but I do not know. Tonight I was lucky enough to be able to see the movie in the German-dubbed version in the local town cinema.

The film is extremely good. It sticks quite close to the book, and while some elements from the book have been left out, nothing big has been left out at all.

The IMDB information is linked here; Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomkvist, and Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth Salander. It is 152 minutes long, or IOW 2 hours and 32 minutes long, which means a long sitting in the cinema.

The first thing that really struck me was just how normal all the actors and actresses looked. There is a tendency in German films, and far more of a drive in Hollywood and British films, to use actors and actresses who look on the whole much more glossy than the usual run of people you meet on the street; but in this film, those acting looked like very normal people indeed, including all the main characters. Noomi Rapace played Lisbeth Salander with just the right edge of, well, edge; not brooding at all, no broodiness, but an edge of seeming quite pissed off in general, and often pissed off with people. All the places used in the film looked very normal as well, and life in general as shown in the movie was portrayed well.

To give the story line, which plays out for the most part in Sweden:

a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, just sent to jail for 3 months and also given a huge fine for defamation (libel), is given a job by an eighty-two-year-old, wealthy industrialist. Every year, punctually around a certain date, someone anonymously sends the industrialist a framed pressed flower, something that a favourite niece of his did for him till she disappeared at the age of sixteen -- forty years ago. The industrialist is unsurprisingly convinced someone is trying to drive him mad, and that someone could only be the murderer of the girl. While no body was ever found, such a long absence can only mean murder, as he informs Mikael Blomkvist.

Blomkvist undertakes the investigation into the unsolved, forty-year-old disappearence, with the help of Lisbeth Salander, a young woman with phenomenal cracking (computer hacking) skills and also a woman with a lot of secrets of her own, an abused childhood and a rapist for a legal guardian, one who threatens her with forcible detention in a closed psychiatric hospital. Were not that all bad enough already, Blomkvist and Salander discover that there is a chain of unsolved murders of young women, a serial murderer at large somewhere ...


There is one very good scene in the film where the willful nature of sociopathic murder is made clear, that in other words the murderer is no victim and not psychotic at all, but instead a murderer just because the person likes to murder, and likes the power over the victims.

All in all, an extremely well-made film, one that stays close to the book, and very well-worth watching indeed.

Now, a few ancillary notes: the point of differentiating between willful, voluntary murder on one side and psychosis or any other victimhood on the other side is very well made, and very true, and something on which I will be blogging about in general a lot later on.

I do not think that the English-dubbed version will score much of a commercial release in the USA since there is quite a bit of nudity in the film, and worse, there is one hell of a lot of cigarette smoking (Lisbeth Salander smokes like a chimney throughout). Hopefully, there will still be something of a commercial release in the States, but I do doubt it.

Edited to add:
but see my update in my post below!

[Gurdur]

Update to this all:
apparently there will be a commercial release in the USA after all, and not too long to wait, either.

The first feature film in the Millennium trilogy, Men Who Hate Women (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in the UK and the US), has been acquired by Chicago-based Music Box Films for US distribution. The film is scheduled to premier on cinemas in March 2010.

Link on the quoted bit and more here


I will also point out that March, 2010, is when I will be able to see the second film (English title: "The Girl Who Played With Fire") in its German dubbed version, while Americans will be watching the first one, but it's nice to know that others won't miss out on it. I would be prepared for some cuts in the USA version, though, for the reasons stated in my OP.

Remember: you read it all first on the Hub!

[Ranger]

I am a movie geek though horror is my favorite I will have to check this one out. Thanks Gurdur.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Ranger

I am a movie geek though horror is my favorite I will have to check this one out. Thanks Gurdur.

Keep in mind that this film will be the first one of three. I do not know when the second one will be coming out in an English-dubbed version; maybe late next year. The Danes and Swedes have already seen the second one, and the German-dubbed version of that second one will be out in March next year.

The film (the first one) is excellent, even if you don't know the book at all. So do watch it, even if you have not read the book. Interestingly, in the cinema and showing I was at (third weekend of it, I think, or maybe second week-end of showing), every single person in the whole theatre seemed to have read the books, all three of them. A strange experience, to turn up at a film where I am not one of the extreme few who has previously read the book.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Ranger

... horror is my favorite ....

There is a horror scene where a bloke gets forcibly and amateurishly tattooed across his belly in great big letters. But then, everyone almost cheered out loud (and I laughed loud), since the bloke getting the free tattoo without wanting it is a very nasty rapist getting part of his comeuppance (the other comeuppance, in more ways than one, is him having his dildo stuffed up his bum forcibly and nastily. Again, we all came close to cheering. It was quite a big dildo).

Hmmm. There are some very-hard-to-take scenes in the film, though, quite nasty ones, but I will not describe them. Too much of a spoiler.

[Never]

I always enjoy a movie more if I've read the book (unless the screenplay is dreadful of course). The book was quite good. Thanks for the reviews and info Gurdur.

[Fizzle]

YouTube- The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Official Trailer [HD]

YouTube- The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Official Trailer [HD]

USA trailer. Better be worth the wait. So many botched up adaptations in my film history...

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Fizzle

..... USA trailer. Better be worth the wait. So many botched up adaptations in my film history...

That appears to be the original Swedish/German movie, dubbed over, not a USA adaption of the movie. It's an extremely good movie. Hard, though, like the book.

[Fizzle]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

That appears to be the original Swedish/German movie, dubbed over, not a USA adaption of the movie. It's an extremely good movie. Hard, though, like the book.

Oh, well, the film is slated for March. Maybe they got lazy.

[Makbawehuh]

Why couldn't they just subtitle it? Oi.

[Fizzle]

Eek. I'm not watching no dub film.

[Gurdur]

Bit difficult to learn Swedish just for one film.

I watched it dubbed into German; it was fine. Great job of dubbing synchronization, no complaints, brilliant film.

Do watch it, Fizzle; you won't be disappointed. It really is a good adaption of the book.

[Makbawehuh]

Embedding disabled by request!

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Makbawehuh

Embedding disabled by request!

Double-click on it, will take you straight to YouTube and the video, no problems.

[Makbawehuh]

Ah. Thanks!

[Fizzle]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

Bit difficult to learn Swedish just for one film.

I watched it dubbed into German; it was fine. Great job of dubbing synchronization, no complaints, brilliant film.

Do watch it, Fizzle; you won't be disappointed. It really is a good adaption of the book.

Can't they just leave the original and sub it? I enjoyed The Seventh Seal like that, and other foreign films as well. I have such a hard time ignoring the lip movements in another language, it annoys me for some reason.

[Makbawehuh]

Ditto. I read fast enough to enjoy a movie with subtitles, and I can still see what's going on in the film. Which is nice. *may eventually see it anyways, liked the review*