The Swedes adapted Stieg Larsons book in 2009 , which introduced the rest of us to Noomi Rapace ,the gypsy lady in the current Sherlock Holmes – a game of shadows movie as Lisbeth and Michael Nyqvist who can be seen as the main villan in Mission Impossible Ghost protocol as Mikael. The two protagonists are the heart and soul of the trilogy. That trilogy was well-made, low key and provocative film very far from glossy. Enter Hollywood and David Fincher. From the opening sequence you see Fincher and co had a bigger budget than the Swedes with an audacious James-bond like opening sequence which is the best thing I’ve seen in years.
The James bond –isms’ unfortunately did not end with the title sequence. The similarities keep rearing their heads but not in a good way too way many times. For instance Daniel Craig James Bond personae clouds his role of Mikael for me. Instead of Mikel being a leftee down to earth journalist. Craig’s Mikael is a yuppie journalist who dresses like a mannequin at Stuttafords, and the fact everyone speaks in a sweddish accent except Daniel Craig who keeps to his English accent becomes very jarring, seems like star power gone wrong.
I wish the bond-ism would have ended there but they stretched into the character relationship between Lisbeth and Mikael. In the book and the Sweddish flicks, Lisbeth is a hard nut who has anti-social tendencies.
Mara from the social network does a very good Lisbeth but the Americans seem to have issues with strong females .They had to try to make Lisbeth into a conventional female lead, making her subservient to Craig and to her chasing after him.This is where it lost it from me with Lisbeth,but Mara’s perfomance theres no faulting it.
The film though is very slick, it had a big budget and you see it by the more scenes this film has, characters and exotic locations that the Swedes did‘nt have.
Yet I honestly feel Craig brings too much baggage to the flick. Watering down Lisbeth especially in the last part of the flick was a misstep, but if you don’t like movies with subtitles this one is for you. It’s slick ,isbeth has got cool costume, theres a lot of skin being shown and it doesn’t drag but if you are lisbeth fan from the books you may have issues with the end.