The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire

It’s Chicks Who Rock week at redbox, and right now one of the most rocking chicks in pop culture is Lisbeth Salander, the co-hero of the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s crazy popular Millennium trilogy of mystery novels: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. Seriously, you cannot ride a bus or train or go into a coffee shop in Chicago without seeing someone reading one of the novels.

Swedish film versions of all three books have been made, all starring the terrific Noomi Rapace as Salander and solid Michael Nyqvist as investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist. Dragon Tattoo is out now on DVD and is available from redbox, Played with Fire is in select theaters across the country this month, and Hornets’ Nest will be in North American theaters this October (about the time Fire reaches DVD).

Of course the central draw of the books and the films is Lisbeth Salander, the smart, fierce 85-pound, 4-foot-9-inch punk with a photographic memory, a mental-institution past, and some heavy emotional issues. Oh and she’s a sociopath. As written by Larsson, Salander sometimes comes off more as a collection of “crazy” tics and stereotypes than a fully developed, thought-out character. (Oooh, she has tattoos and piercings and wears black leather! Ooooo, she sleeps with women! Ahhhh, she carries a taser and wields a mean golf club or ax!)

But the nasty stuff in Salander’s life (mostly abuse at the hands of truly heinous male characters) has left her guarded and mostly silent, which of course makes the character more mysterious and compelling. And her pathological independence is offset by a vicious (if almost begrudging) loyalty to the few people she lets in, defending herself and them with terrifying intensity.

The Actress Who Brought Lisbeth to Life

Very luckily in the films Salander is played by the half-Spanish Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. Sure, Rapace is a little taller than the book version of Lisbeth, but what’s made her beloved by fans of both the novels and the films is her ability to mix vulnerability and ferociousness—almost all done with big, expressive eyes that can flip from warm and expressive to frighteningly cold.

Rapace plays Lisbeth as a ghost you may not notice at the edge of your vision, while also making her a much more human, relatable character. (Though still someone you wouldn’t want coming after you with a taser, golf club, ax, or wi-fi network.) Thanks to the actress, the screen version of Lisbeth is every bit as cool and fascinating as the book version wants to be.

(I know they’re working to cast Salander for David Fincher’s Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo–and after Zodiac’s dead calm dread, I have no doubt Fincher is the right guy for the job. But Rapace would still have to be your first choice for a remake, even though the actress says she doesn’t want to do it all again. Otherwise, I might suggest Krysten Ritter from Breaking Bad and She’s Out of My League.)

On DVD: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Of the first two Swedish films, I slightly prefer The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s much better than the book—director Niels Arden Oplev and writer Nikolaj Arcel have neatly cut away a lot of the novel’s excessive gunk, though they’re stuck with the story’s problem of having to carry on long after its climax. They’ve removed a completely unnecessary, boring, self-aggrandizing affair, and they’ve streamlined a lot of its fussy soap-boxing about noble magazine editing. The result is a tighter focus on Dragon’s creepy central mystery: the moldering “locked room” case of a girl who went missing in 1962 and the family of rich weirdoes and ex-Nazis who provide a platter of suspects—and red (pickled) herrings.

Dragon is not a flashy, stylistic film (though be warned—all the brutal, sadistic sexual violence of the book is right there on the screen and seeing it is a lot harder than reading it), and there are some cinematic shortcomings carried over from the books. Much of the “action” revolves around someone sitting at a computer, smoking while looking things up or in library archives, smoking while examining old photos and newspaper clippings.

And Larsson’s weak with villains—the reveal of Dragon’s bad guy is blandly anti-climactic. But for the most part the film is a compelling procedural–the low-key, cold winter-light tone suits the mysterious proceedings, and there’s a nice, heavy dread layered over all the shadowy secrets. And while Michael Nyqvist often gets overlooked in the shadow of Rapace’s Lisabeth, the actor deserves kudos for doing the film’s legwork, quietly moving its plot along on the back of Blomkvist’s thoughtful searching.

(The DVD comes with both subtitles and a dubbed vocal soundtrack. The dubbing isn’t bad, but it’s still off-putting to have Rapace’s performance marred by semi-cheesy vocals.)

In Theaters: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Dragon’s cinematic sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire is more of a thriller than a deep mystery. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, it propels itself along with a more immediate, modern-day threat: Blomkvist is drawn into investigating a sexual slavery ring while Salander is in hiding after being framed for murder. So there’s still lots of online researching (and psycho-sexual violence), but hey, there’s also kickboxing!

My small problem with Fire is that it starts to reveal the limits of Larsson’s imagination—there’s not much new here. The villains are straight out of Central Bond Casting, including the hobbled mastermind and his hulking Jaws-like henchman. (And everyone uses their cell phones for just about everything except calling the police.) Also Lisbeth was a much more interesting character when she was a complete nobody—Fire’s plot mechanisms draw Salander’s story into wider, national conspiratorial circles that rob her of her sharply honed anonymity. And as in any sequel, we expect Lisabeth to be a badass and so her kicking butt feels a bit like playing to the crowd.

(This middle film of the trilogy feels like the psychosexual, sadistic Swedish version of The Empire Strikes Back, from the revelation of secret ancestries to its uncertain ending. I haven’t read the last book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find it contains Ewoks.)

Still, as films, both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire are perfectly enjoyable, engrossing mystery thrillers, and most definitely prove the exceptions to the rule that “the book’s always better than the movie.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is on DVD and available for rental from redbox. The Girl Who Played with Fire is in limited theatrical release.