January 29, 2012

When She Pulled Out A Vaio P For No Reason, I’m Like, Must Be A Sony Pictures Movie.

Kohl’s was like “Dammit, have this free movie ticket!” so Cara and I said “Okay!” and we went to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo because that was basically the only movie that seemed worth shit that one of us hadn’t already seen. Plus Cara had seen the other films and such, so she wanted to see. I knew very little to nothing about it, but I was game.

It was an enjoyable movie-going experience. I probably would have never seen it without this free ticket, and I wouldn’t have felt like I would have missed something great, but it was entertaining! I’d recommend it.

Cara told me there was a lot of changes from the books and whatnot? But I was going in cold, like I said, so maybe it’d be more interesting if I gave my opinions without all of that comparison.

First off, the opening credit sequence was some of the most ridiculous bullshit I’ve ever seen. It seemed like it was going to be extremely inappropriate, and it was. They could not have done a worse job at introducing the movie they were about to show me. It was basically a James Bond opening, but just because Daniel Craig is in a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Bond movie. It was just fucking wrong, even if it did look kind of cool.

That was almost certainly the low point, though. The movie picked up after that with no problems, and I did find myself interested in the whole mystery going on and these characters. For the most part, I felt like I got the whole story. However, near the end, it seemed like they must have skipped something. Suddenly they were close enough for a huge bit of money-lending to occur without even a second thought. I did not see that character development happen. I mean, sure, Lizbeth or whatever her name is is a bit weird, so I buy her being that attached, but Daniel Craig’s character just didn’t seem to have the motivation to be that involved at that point. They hadn’t been working together long enough. They hadn’t known each other long enough. I dunno. That was really the only time during the film I questioned the characters, though.

Really, the movie just shocked me with how graphic it was. It showed quite a lot! There were some rapes, a very clear shot of a very brutally murdered cat… just a lot of shots you just don’t see a lot! I didn’t have trouble watching it, because none of it was stabbing. (I don’t really know why I can’t stand to watch someone being stabbed, but, you know. I can’t look at the screen when someone is being stabbed. Made playing the end of Dead Space 2 pretty hard to accomplish!) But it still surprised me a whole hell of a lot. I will admit some of that was because my mom said she liked the movie, and she loved the whole series and all the movies, and that just strikes me as odd, seeing some of the content. But, you know, my mother can have grown-up tastes in films, sure. Just takes a bit to sink in, I suppose. Heh.

Really, though, all the actors did a great job, it was an interesting story… I really have no complaints overall. From what Cara told me, maybe some people who were real fans of the book would have? I dunno. I’m not that person. It was a solid, enjoyable film, one worth seeing if you want to know what this whole Dragon Tattoo thing is all about.

The money lending bit is somewhat poorly explained.

So at the start of the film we find out that Wennerstrom (I think that’s his name) managed to trap Blomkvist by feeding him false incriminating information. Blomkvist finds Harriet’s killer to get ‘actual dirt’ on Wennerstrom, but it’s worthless. Lisbeth, however, does Blomkvist a favour by hacking into Wennerstrom’s company and extracting enough information to tie him to crime syndicates, and Wennerstrom abruptly runs off to the Cayman Islands, having embezzled a fortune.

Lisbeth realises that she has his account details, and no-one else knows them. She borrows some money from Blomkvist for fake IDs, makeup, wigs, etc. and goes and clears out Wennerstrom’s accounts, converting them into bonds, which she then deposits into another account of her own. It’s not like he’s going to go to the cops, and as long as she can’t be traced, she’ll be a multi-millionaire. Blomkvist knows nothing of this.

Comment by Merus — January 29, 2012 @ 5:41 pm

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