The Reel Review
Claire Foy stars as main character Lisbeth Salander in this adaptation of the fourth book in the Millennium crime novel series, which also provides glimpses of our crime-fighting vigilante’s early childhood as she works alongside journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) to stop a crime syndicate trying to wrest cyber-control of the world’s nuclear weapons.
The film features stunning visuals of the Swedish countryside and a rousing score. But unfortunately, director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) in his first non-horror film, wastes a big budget production on a nonsensical, slapped together story that would be laughable had it not been so expensive to make. Foy does a fine job but all the sleek looking visual effects and pointless action sequences fail to divert attention from a confusing, convoluted plot, which will be an affront to fans of the first three, well-crafted stories.
REEL FACTS
• Claire Foye edged out Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Felicity Jones and Alicia Vikander for the role, to the delight of director Fede Alvarez, since it was so counterintuitive to her portrait of Queen Elizabeth in The Crown
• This story is the first not written by Millenium series creator Stieg Larsson, who died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004 before the first of his novels, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, was published.
• After the relative box office disappointment of 2011’s well done Hollywood version of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, filmmakers decided to recast the main characters. Noomi Rapace starred in the three popular Swedish film adaptations of the Millennium novels.
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