The best “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” actress is Noomi Rapace. The Swedish thrillers based on the Millennium book series, introduced to a character who isn’t a piece of meat. To put it bluntly, for those of you unfamiliar with Lisbeth Salander, she is a computer hacker, who gets revenge on perverts, rapists, and fornicators, all associated with big companies. She, herself, has been violated, and she tends to protect other woman.
Then in 2011, we had a decent American version with Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. And now, we have Claire Foy in the next version “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” which does what it can, but ends up being somewhat annoying and convoluted.
The movie starts with Lisbeth meeting the NSA’s former computer genius Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), who has developed a program that can control nuclear devices. He regrets doing it, and for the sake of his son August (Christopher Convery), he asks Lisbeth to steal it back from the NSA. She steals it, but the device gets stolen by a group of men, led by Lisbeth’s presumed dead sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks), who also requires the little boy. So Lisbeth must team up with her old journalist friend Mikel Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason), and an American NSA agent (LaKeith Stanfield) in order to protect him.
The things I’ve enjoyed about “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” are the escapes scenes, and the acting. But everything else has to be convoluted, annoying, and a little uncomfortable. It’s not really up to the high standards of the Swedish movies.
The escape scenes I’m referring to include Lisbeth dodging the police on her motorcycle, by riding on an frozen river. I’m not sure if this is possible or not. You tell me.
The acting is here is fine. Foy is flexible as Lisbeth with her dialogue, accent, and vulnerability. Gudnasson is charming as Blomkvist in the ways he handles situations in a calm manner. Hoeks makes an interesting villain with her words and execution. And Stanfield expands his horizons as the agent, who keeps his cool and adjusts to his situations.
The plot gets muddled with all this cyberattack talk, the henchmen are treated as puppets, and some of the dialogue is annoying. I also didn’t like some torture scenes like Lisbeth being suffocating in black plastic, and I hate when villains threaten to have poisons that make people permanently blind. I know certain international thrillers are meant to torture people in certain ways, but some of us are not into those types.
“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” has its moments, but it ends up being simple.
⭐️⭐️1/2
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