The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Review

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first instalment in a series of books known as The Millennium Trilogy written by the Swedish, and now quite dead, author Stieg Larsson. The original title of the book (and also the film) is Män som hatar kvinnor, which translates to: Men Who Hate Women. And How! I haven’t seen this much non-consensual sex in the one sitting since I had jury duty.⁺I mean, I’d just gotten broadband at the time. 

The story begins with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist(Michael Nyqvist ) being found guilty of defamation against Hans-Erik Wennerström. Mikael had printed some rather accusatory statements in his magazine, Millenium, and earned himself three months in prison. But before his sentence begins, he is summoned by Henrik Vanger(Sven-Bertil Taube ), retired CEO and head of the Vanger family dynasty who beseeches Mikael to use his journalistic powers to investigate the disappearance of his great niece some thirty-five years prior.



Since Mikael is taking some time off from the magazine, and has nothing better to do until his sentence begins, he agrees to take on the assignment. The fact that he’s been promised a fat wad of cash whether he solves the case or not might also have had something to do with him accepting the challenge. One thing leads to another and he winds up partnering with a hot, young goth-slash-punk by the name of Lisbeth Salander(Noomi Rapace ) who has - you guessed it - a dragon tattoo. Lisbeth works for a security company and is quite an investigator herself, attributed mostly to her aptitude for computer hackery. She induced more than a few eye rolls with that laptop of hers, let me tell you. Mystery is conjured, interesting things happen and the subject of rape comes up A LOT.



This film reminded me of silence of the lambs and, to a far lesser extent, The Da Vinci Code. The book includes a “genealogical table” of the Vanger family so the reader can keep track of who the hell everybody is. It would have been handy to have such a cheat sheet during this movie as my entourage and I found it difficult to keep track of the different family members as they crossed paths with Mikael during his investigation. This wasn’t a huge issue, but it did bring on that feeling you get during conversations where you pretend to know what the other person is talking about.

Oh, and be warned: here be subtitles. Being an anime purist, I’m used to missing half of the action while I read along at the speed of a child on his first pair of roller-skates. If you’re the kind of person who borks at the idea of subtitles, I say: Don’t be ungroovy, enjoy the movie.



The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is highly enjoyable, even if it did run a tad long. The characters have real depth and the dialogue is intelligent. I highly recommend this film for fans of mystery and/or thriller genre.

I’m giving The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a score of four nose rings out of five.

If you’re wondering (you’re SO wondering) if the remaining two books are being adapted into feature films, the answer is yes. The second instalment, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is due to be released in the US and the UK around August/September this year, so I’d expect an Australian release around that time.