The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It is with sadness that I must inform my blog followers (the two of you) that I am officially dead. It happened at 4:25pm on April 12th, 2010. The police report says states that Jeremy Wayne Irvin was walking into one of his favorite movie theatres "The Flicks", when unexpectedly his mind was blown into a thousand pieces. Witnesses claim that they didn't get a good look at the perpetrators face but all reported seeing a girl with a dragon tattoo fleeing the scene of the crime.

Yes, in case you haven't been able to figure out yet, I just had the extreme pleasure of watching the Swedish film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" based on the first book of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy". In this darkly rooted mystery, we follow a 40 year old mystery revolving around the disappearance, and possible murder, of a girl named Harriet Vanger. One day during a family reunion/business meeting (comprised of 30 members of the Vanger Family) Harriet disappeared off of the face of the Earth. And because of unfortunate circumstances that are to long to go into, Harriet's Uncle Henrik Vanger (played by Sven-Bertil Taube), who is president of the family company, believes that one of his own family members is guilty of the crime.

Flash forward to present time and we meet Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace), a very tough 22 year old girl who is a out for truth and justice, at least her version of it. She and another man, Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nygvist), are hired by Henrik to help try and finally solve this family secret that has been 40 years in the making.

I do not want to describe to much about Lisbeth and mikael because watching these to characters develop, and their interactions with one another, is one of the many wonderful things about this movie. I personally can't get enough of them. Thank goodness there are still two more movies in the series to look forward to!

This movie is slower paced, which is usually the way for Scandinavian films. They do something different than most American films do nowadays, they actually focus on plot and character development and not big chase scenes. And even though some might be scared off by the mere idea of reading subtitles for a movie that clocks in at over 2 and a half hours, all I can say is you won't regret it. In fact, it seemed to be one of the shortest movies I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

I can not say enough good things about this movie. The script is amazing, the acting is top notch, and the visuals are something out of a dark and moody dream. While this definitely will not be everyone's cup of tea, if you can stomach it, you will be well rewarded in the end.

WARNING: strong violence, sexual depictions (including a very graphic rape scene), and language.

4 and (1/2) out of 5