Winner of the Best Feature Award at the Palm Spring International Film Festival
Starring
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander and Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
For the past forty years a Wealthy Swedish recluse, Henrik Vanger, has been asking himself what happened to his beloved niece, Harriet. He assumes that someone might have killed her. Henrik hires Journalist Mikael Blomqvist to investigate who murdered Harriet. Mikael later gets help from a professional hacker named Lisabeth Salander.
Blaine: Author Stieg Larsson was a well known journalist in Sweden after starting a Anti-racism magazine called Expo in 1995. Stieg saw stuff that he wished he could change in Sweden like racism and violence against women and those are a few of the things his magazine focuses on. Stieg Larsson wanted to do something new that was original and had never been written before. He had an idea of this troubled twenty four year old girl who has a tattoo of a dragon on her back and is good at hacking stuff. Her partner, Mikael Blomkvist, Stieg based on himself for being a journalist and owning a magazine company. In 2004, Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack at the age of 50, but before he died he was able to finish writing three crime stories involving a woman with a dragon tattoo on her back. His first novel, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, was published the next year after his death and two more books, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”, were published after that. They are known as "the Millennium Trilogy”. Stieg Larsson was called one of the greatest writers known to man after his books were published and became successful because of people who loved reading them. Steig was working on a fourth book to his trilogy just before he died, but it was never completed.
Yellow Bird, a Swedish production company, was thinking about turning “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” into a film and the director they had in mind was Niels Arden Oplev. Niels was given the book and he discovered it had a lot more to it than he expected while reading it. He thought the book was very different, extraordinary and had a really good plot. Niels also liked the Lisabeth character because she is unusual. She is someone with a dark past and has a lot of hate she carries inside her, but she is also a smart and strong person. Niels knew that he had to make a movie out of this after everything he read in the book.
Niels was nervous when it came to casting the character, Lisabeth Salander, because he kept asking himself who would be perfect to portray the character. It bothered him so much that he had trouble sleeping at night. When Noomi Rapace went in to audition she informed Niels that she would do anything to get this job like change her body, cut her hair, get all the piercings. Noomi read the books and she felt very close to Lisabeth. Niels thought Noomi was too beautiful at first, but he liked how passionate she was about getting the role. Niels and Noomi spent two hours talking to each other about the part and after that he felt convinced that she was the right choice.
Noomi was scared the first time she heard they were going to make a movie of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” because she felt she wouldn’t be good enough for the role of Lisabeth because of her looks. When they informed her she got the job, Noomi was having a hard time believing it. Noomi had seven months to prepare herself for the role. Noomi had to get in shape and change her diet with the help of a dietitian so she could look more masculine. Noomi also had to practice martial arts, kick boxing, Thai boxing and how to ride a motorbike. Then she had to get her hair cut. The piercings she couldn’t do all at once because it would turn against her, so she only did two a month.
Noomi thought of Lisabeth in the novel as a cartoon because she eats junk food, but runs like an arrow. She’s really strong and can beat people up, even though she smokes a lot.
Michael Nyqvist had never read the books before, but Niels Arden Oplev had told him about the plot and Harriet's mystery and that really intrigued Michael. He read the books after that and it made him wish that he could have met author Stieg Larsson because he loved that the stories he wrote were so original. He never got bored while reading each one of the stories Stieg came up with because he likes mystery a lot. It was really fun for Michael to work on project like this.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” sold 30 thousand tickets during the first day it hit theaters in Sweden. Fans who have read the book were looking forward in seeing how it would look on the big screen. Two more films, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”, were released the same year in Sweden after “Dragon Tattoo”. "Dragon Tattoo" was released in February of 2009, "Played with Fire", September 2009 and "Hornets' Nest" was November 2009. It is the only trilogy….by far, to have all three of it’s movies be released during the same year. The other two films, after “Dragon Tattoo”, focus more on Lisabeth because someone frames her for murder and she must find out who is responsible. Meanwhile Mikael is doing everything he can to clear Lisabeth’s name. You also get to learn more about Lisabeth's past of why she is so damaged and the relationship between her and her father, Alexander Zalachenko. I have fun watching these movies and what’s fun about them is seeing how these characters go through one journey after another to solve a mystery.
For the past two years, Lisabeth Salander took a big chunk out of Noomi Rapace's life. Her career changed forever after playing Lisbeth in the “Millennium" trilogy. If she wasn’t chosen for that part, she probably wouldn’t have been the star she is today and wouldn't have found herself to be apart of huge movies such as Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” and Ridley Scott's “Prometheus”. Noomi said the down side is fame because it brings too much attention. She loves acting though and she has been doing it since she was seven.
There’s an Extended Edition of the “Millennium" trilogy that adds an extra half hour to each film which would make it nine hours to sit through. There’s one extended scene towards the end of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” that shows Lisabeth standing on a street waiting for Mikael to come out of the Millennium building and I believe she wants to tell him the feelings she has for him. But then Erika, Mikael’s co-worker who he had an affair with, shows up and he puts his arm around her while walking away. Lisabeth is let down and just walks away. That’s how it ends in the book except Lisabeth goes to Mikael to give him a jacket she had boughten for him as a Christmas present and she sees him with Erika. Having a mixture of sad and angry, Lisabeth throws the jacket in a garbage can and takes off in her motorbike. She looks like she takes it easier in the film though.
My rating on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is five out of five stars.
A Prophet Premiere of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” at Cannes 2009
