Checked out the new film The Girl in the Spider’s Web. In book form, this is the fourth book in the Stieg Larsen Dragon Tattoo (Millennium) series that started with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo… in movie form, it’s the second American film… and it might be intended as a sequel but it’s hard to tell. It has a new cast but a similar opening title sequence. I suppose it doesn’t matter, not really.
The new film stars Claire Foye as edgy outlaw hacker Lisbeth Salander and Some Dude as Mikael Blomkvist, previously played by Daniel Craig. Neither new actor works… Claire Foye is especially not a convincing edgy, angry hacker… she just doesn’t feel like a badass character. It’s partly her face (a little too round and cute), partly the makeup/appearance, and partly, sad to say, the acting. I was so underwhelmed by her performance it stopped the momentum of the film.
As to that plot… it might as well be a 007 film. People are after a program that will give them instant control over all the nuclear weapons (or maybe some? Just America’s? Who knows). Lizbeth steals it, someone steals it from her, much running around and avoiding the authorities ensues. NSA agents, former KGB, etc get in the way or try to help.
Oh, and Lizbeth’s crazy sister is key to the whole thing, though maybe that was supposed to be a secret the trailers spoiled. Either way, the conflict between them barely has anything to do with the reject 80s cold war plot. I’m not sure what the spider’s web of the trailer really refers to… it was kind of a happy accident Salander took the job in the first place.
I was massively underwhelmed and bored by this movie. I haven’t seen the Swedish versions of the second and third book, but this lightweight spy thriller story doesn’t feel remotely like anything in the first flick (and book). I know the author of the first three books did not write this story and it feels like they are trying to turn the character and stories into something other than originally intended.
Score: 66