The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Review

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the latest film brought to us by Swedish director Niels Arden Oplev; based on the first novel of The Men Who Hate Women trilogy by Stiegg Larsson.  The story revolves around an unsolved forty year old murder and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative reporter’s (played by Michael Nyqvist) search to uncover the mystery surrounding the murder, meanwhile uncovering the works of a religiously and racist motivated serial killer. Blomkvist, who is waiting to serve out a prison term for a crime he was set up for, is helped out by ultra-feminist and genius computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (played by the ever talented Noomi Rapace).

The plot is simple enough, the execution, not so much.  What starts off as a very engaging plot quickly turns into a grotesque horrorfest of graphic sexual violence and nauseating scenes of rape after rape. And while these sexually violent moments are essential for helping shape the characteristics of the victim, Lisbeth Salander, the graphicness of them could have been avoided – as these scenes not only made every person in the theatre uncomfortable; but led to quite a few walk-outs.  After we get through these extremely graphic scenes the plot starts to engage the audience again and continues to unravel at a nice pace... that is, until the last half an hour.  This film is two and a half hours long, and that is edited; the original version is over three hours; and technically the plot ends around 1 hour and 50 minutes into the film.  The remaining 30 – 40 minutes is an attempt at cleaning up every last untied knot; which lead to moments where the audience goes: ‘wait a second – if that’s the case – this entire movie was pointless!’

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t hate the film... but I definitely didn’t love it either. The acting was incredible; Michael Nyqvist’s portrayal of Mikael Blomkvist was phenomenal.  I am looking forward to seeing him in future films.  I’m very interested in seeing the next two films: The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest to see if Mikael Blomkvist can manage the same level of performance that he did in the first film.  Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander took awhile to warm up to as a character. She was cold and devoid of emotion and at the beginning of the film you didn’t know if that was a character flaw or an acting flaw; but as the movie progressed and Lisbeth’s story was told her character became much more sympathetic and it would be hard to envision anyone else playing the role of Lisbeth.  Once again, I am interested to see how Rapace does in the next two films... and very interested in how David Lynch will cast the 2012 American re-make of this film.
 

Leaving the film a lot of people either really liked it or really hated it; and really it all comes down to how people a) stomached the sexual violence and b) how they reacted to the explanation at the ending.  I don’t want to give away spoilers; but the entire 40 year old murder investigation has absolutely no real premise in the film by the end; and the way that it is presented was done in a way that kind of pissed me off; but really pissed off the guy next to me; who ranted and raved forever about how the ending of the film made him mad and was lazy script writing; etc..

Roger Ebert thinks that this is one of the best films he has ever seen;   this confuses me because the film was just subpar, nothing too fantastic, nothing too dreadful.  I wish it had been shorter and less graphic.  I don’t know how the North American audience will react to this film. First off, it’s subtitled – a lot of fun was had in the first 10 minutes as we watched all the illiterates stand up and walk out of the theatre; secondly – it’s one of the most graphic (sexually) films I have ever seen – it’s on par with Lars von Trier’s Antichrist for sexual violence; thirdly – it’s so long that to have A.D.D. North American audiences try to engage with this film definitely won’t be as easy as European audiences.

The film is not for the faint of heart.  If you can’t handle violence or sexual content in films then don’t think you can handle this film. I have sat through some violently graphic films before but nothing has made my stomach churn like a few scenes from this film.  The movie isn’t even that fantastic to justify these scenes; they could have been done, as important as they are, without the same level of graphicness.

This movie is definitely not for everyone.

2.5 out of 5

Clash of the Titans: Review

Clash of the Titans is the latest Warner Bros. film from director Louis Leterrier, whose movies have gotten progressively worse since his debut with the excellent Jet Li film: Danny the Dog (Unleashed). Clash of the Titans is no different from this trend. Screenwriters Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, & Matt Manfredi provided a script that’s dialogue is almost as campy and laughable as Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.   The story of this 2010 remake follows Perseus (Sam Worthington), a demi-god, and his goal to avenge the death of the family who adopted him as a child through declaring war on Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the Underworld.  Meanwhile, his quest of vengeance will also help the Argonauts defeat the horrendous Kraken who is planning on destroying the city of Argos.   The quest takes Perseus to the mountain of the three-blind witches, the depths of the Underworld, the lair of Medusa (Natalia Vodianova ), and the heart of Argos, while facing off against giant scorpions, hideously disfigured men, and other terrible creatures.  He also is helped along the way by Zeus (Liam Neeson) and the ever faithful Pegasus.

I went into this film with high hopes; I was very excited for a remake of the cult classic from 1981, yet sceptical about how the 3D would turn out.  This film was originally shot in 2D and then sent back to the editing room and edited in 3D; which proves to be the first of many downfalls with this film.  The 3D in this film is laughable; if you want to call it 3D. I spent most of the movie looking over my 3D glasses because they got in the way and made the film less enjoyable.  I already mentioned how deplorable the script was; the dialogue was campy and boring (much like the rest of the film) and the character that provides the most depth throughout the entire film is killed off within the first 8 minutes.  I’m surprised that the girl who played Medusa was even credited for the role as her character was completely CGI’ed and her entire dialogue consisted of yelling and laughing fiendishly.  Which brings up the rest of the acting; Liam Neeson – what happened? You are a great actor – but this time – you failed.  I’ve never liked Sam Worthington, so I had no problem once again hating another performance from this subpar actor who manages to get his roles based on sex appeal.  All lines are delivered hollowly and rehearsed; as was each and every movement. There is a scene where Perseus is being trained in the art of swordplay and after 30 seconds of learning he can best the man who is teaching him; yet his movements and actions look so rigid and uncomfortable that it is one of the most unbelievable moments in the film. The acting continues to suck throughout the film and the wide range of the cast – an actor’s job is to engage you in the story; to engage you in their character; and make you see the importance and story behind each and every movement they do – yet as characters are killed off throughout this adventure one feels almost nothing for the loss of their character, I in fact felt happy for many of the deaths because it meant: a) the film was getting closer to being done and b) I wouldn’t have to put up with as many rigid and awkward actors in front of me.

The action starts to save the film; but falls short as well when every fight becomes a rehash of the one before it. It reminded me of every episode of The Power Rangers when they fought the same old Putties, in the same way, every single day. The only difference is that instead of a 45 second fight we had to sit through nearly 2 hours of these rehashed fights that got boring very quickly.  And then there was The Kraken.  The Kraken is a giant beast from the Underworld that is sent to destroy the city of Argos; but even he loses originality as he looked exactly like the creature from the great South-Korean monster flick Gwoemul.

And the 3D? I saved the worst for last. IF you decide to see this atrocity don’t spend the extra 3.50 – 5$, or whatever extra it costs, to see this film in 3D. It is one million percent a gimmick; and a bad one at that.  This film, as bad as it was, may have actually been better in 2D. I will never know – because I won’t give it a second chance.

Clash of the Titans? It is pretentiously boring; a mixture of old school Power Rangers -  and we know how bad that was – and the walking scenes from Lord of the Rings. While being labelled as the start of the summer blockbuster season I can only predict it as a flop and I dare say that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was better than this craptastic adventure.

Skip. Skip. Skip.

1.5 out of 5 Stars