Based on the title, poster and actors, it is unlikely I would ever suggest watching and even sitting through this two and a half hours suspense-thriller movie. In fact, I have not even read the best-selling trilogy which was adapted into the movie. I was told that the original Swedish movie is better but it came as no surprise to me because which original movie is always better than a remake of it?
So, it is good that I went to watch this movie without an inkling of the storyline. Starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara as the two lead characters, it wasn't apparent at the start how the two seemingly different characters would eventually come together.
It started off with Mickael, played by Daniel Craig, a political magazine publisher, who lost a libel suit against a billionaire and was hired by a retired CEO Henrik Vanger played by Christopher Plummer to write a memoir of him before he dies. Henrik wants Mickael to secretly investigate the disappearance of his then 16 years old niece Harriet in the year 1966 so that there is closure to the mystery that shrouded his family for years.
The investigation led to the meeting of the two to solve the mystery and found the psychopathic serial killer. Daniel Craig's character was rather wimpy and none of his James Bond's character strengths came through here. Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander was the young bisexual social outcast with a brilliant, analytical mind and excellent investigative skills who didn't fit into society's norms in every sense of the word. She adds tattoos to her body to numb the pain that she feels and slowly feels acceptance from the older Mickael.There are a few scenes of their explicit love-making and some violence involving rape and revenge too, which probably earned this a R21 rating here. Her elaborate schemes to thwart the billionaire which caused his eventual death, her pre-meditated revenge on her rapist and her saving of the almost castrated and killed Mickael were a testament of how intelligent and frightening she can be if she sets her mind to doing something.
Initially, I was bewildered by the title of the movie and questioned it. Slowly, it became clear that this movie is not about Harriet or Mickael or any other characters. It is all about Lisbeth and how all these other characters helped us understand her mental psyche and why she did what she did. It ended with her realizing that she was alone once again and it was only her wishful thinking that she could be with Mickael when she saw him leaving for somewhere with his wife in tow after the investigation finally concluded.
So there you go, I enjoyed this unusual non-block buster movie even though it was so damned long.
I watched the movie mainly because of Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer. It tells a sad poignant tale of how Ewan's character Oliver, reflected on his father Hal's life after his mother's death and the latter's coming out confession that he was gay before succumbing to terminal cancer.
Frankly, the movie was slow paced, freaking boring and I fell asleep in the early part. I enjoyed the movie slightly more towards the later segment where it explored Oliver's propensity towards failing his own relationships because of the stigma he experienced while growing up after witnessing his parents' strangely intimate yet detached relationship. The mother Georgia knew of Hal's sexual orientation before she proposed to him because she believed she could change him but it was a relationship that was not meant to be.
Hal married Georgia then out of gratitude towards her for giving him a chance to lead a normal life and remained in the relationship out of his respect towards her. But she herself became off tangent and slightly weird, possibly after she realized that she could not change her husband and overlooked his indiscretions. It was sad to me because the relationship was held together in Georgia's living years by an emotional respect towards each other but it wasn't a love that they each hanker for.
Until Oliver came to terms with his parent's odd relationship could he finally move on further in his relationship with his latest lover Anna, whom also had her own unresolved issues and demons to battle.
This is a movie with a deeper meaning about life, about how lives are shaped by many factors within and beyond our control, and about how the decisions we make in life has an impact on us and the others around us. I guess in this day and age, right or wrong is no longer as important in life, but rather how we choose to live it, regardless of all the good and bad things that happen to us. It makes me wonder, whether I am truly living my life or am I just merely glossing through it?
