Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film (Daniel Craig)

I heard such good things about this film and the book, that I really wanted to see it very badly. While it has some very strong points, I had some serious issues.

The audio quality was one of the worst I have heard recently. I couldn't understand much of the dialogue even though there was no real effort to adopt accents (even though the setting was Sweden). My brother who is in his 40's said the same thing. A few blog entries complained they missed a great deal of the dialogue. It's a real problem with a thriller, mystery when you don't know what they are saying. If it was an artistic choice, then I am doubly dissapointed.

The characters who seem to be brilliant, both walk into a house for no valid reason and set themselves up to be brutally attacked. The girl gets herself raped in one of the most explicit scenes I' ve seen in an American film, and the guy gets himself attacked in very much the same way. It had a continuity problem.

It's a little long. I know the story matched the first book, but it seemed like it went into an unrelated plotline at the end. I felt that they should have used it to kick off the second movie.

I have to say that this movie should not to be missed, on TV. It's really not worth going to the theater to see.

In general it is sad to see this author come into this much international success only after he died at the age of 50.

I rather enjoyed it. My complaint, there's alot going on, I almost need to see it twice.

Ken

I pretty much agree with Paco. The movie has just about everything going for it, except I couldn't keep up with the plot, and thus didn't really care. A common problem when trying to adapt a book to film. The first hour went rather slow in developing the characters. However, the rest went too fast as I couldn't keep track of who was who, and what was going on.

Paco mentioned the rape scene. Indeed, that was pretty strong. A Clockwork Orange was still stronger, but I see Paco said "American film," so no disagreement there.

I didn't have any issue with the audio quality. That may be due to where Paco saw the movie. However, I would like to take issue with what seemed like a deliberate attempt to make the entire movie seems like a cold grey Scandinavia day. Okay, that is where the movie took place, but even indoor scenes seemed digitized to make it deliberately uncolorful. This technique has worked in other movies, like Saving Private Ryan and O Brother Where Art Thou, but in this case it didn't seem natural.

I'd give it a generous 7 on the 0 to 10 scale. The person I went with gave it a 6.

Quote: pacomartin

The audio quality was one of the worst I have heard recently. I couldn't understand much of the dialogue even though there was no real effort to adopt accents (even though the setting was Sweden)..

Thats a deal breaker for me, I would have left.
In the next to last last Harry Potter movie I could
understand about 1 in 5 words those kids with
the heavy accents were saying and I left the
theatre, my wife rode home with her sister. Life
is too short.

A lot of TV is the same way - either too loud or unaudibly quiet. Used to really piss me off. Finally get the sucker turned way up to hear the quiet stuff, and then a commercial blasts your head off. I now use a wireless headset that helps tremendously. Bob, are you sure life is not too long?

the swedish films were much better. seeing this movie really let me down. way too many details were left out. the swedish version was much deeper. i hate how they changed the part at the end where martin drives off the road and his car just blows up. in the swedish version, it had much more meaning. when martin was getting ready to torture bloomquist he talks about how he loves to see the hope completely vanish in his victims eyes finally realizing their fate. in the swedish version when his car goes off the road, the car flips over upside down and lisbeth walks up to him. he reaches out to lisbeth pleading for her to help him. she does nothing and the hope vanishes from his eyes just like with his victims. then the car blows up. but the american film skips all that.

"Clockwork Orange" >>> I might be the only person to not of seen this film yet, its decent?

Ken

It's a must-see IMO. After seeing it I could understand why it had such an influence on British punk music and subculture.

I saw it on the second weekend. Love Daniel Craig and David Fincher so I was looking forward to a dark flick. Opening credits were awesome I thought, with the Nine Inch Nails version of Led Zep's "Immigrant Song" against a typical Reznor-style background. The movie fell from there. Way too long, and the first hour was a sleeper. I woke up in time for the rape scene, which Lisbeth got even for 30 minutes later in awesome fashion (bastard's lucky she let him live at all IMO). Without giving too much away near the end, after seeing Craig as James Bond being so badass, it was unbelievable that he'd get himself into that unbecoming situation. Lisbeth was homely in the beginning, but grew on me by the middle, and her androgeny was sorta appealing eventually; and she really prettied up in the last minutes. Loved her shirt as seen in the below pic, which appropriately summed up her whole personality for this role "F*ck You, you f*cking f*ck". This movie was the first of four to be made from the three books.

Christopher Plummer is in it, I'll see it
on DVD. The guy still makes 2-4 movies
a year in his 80's.