There's nothing like seeing a film based on a novel starring a bunch of actors you don't know to let you appreciate the quality of the adaptation. This was a great film, and I'm glad I was able to see the Swedish adaptation before the American adaption comes out. (My guess is that this version will be the better one since it wasn't Hollywood-ed up, even if Daniel Craig is going to play Blomkvist in the American movie.)The casting was pretty near perfect, at least for the two characters who mattered. (The rest I could take or leave.) Blomkvist was a middle aged but sort of ruggedly handsome go-getter type, and Salander was teeny and angry and very punk, with the haircut to match.
It's interesting how something so graphic and violent and awful (i.e. rape, murder, etc.) can seem less so when you read it (and frankly lack the imagination to picture something so horrible) and yet even when they tone it down for a film, it seems ten times as ugly. They definitely kept the bleak tone of the novel, and even the Swedish landscape added to the feel.
One thing that I really missed was the depth of the characters. Larsson had an almost overzealous narrative, rambling about things that seem pretty irrelevant to the plot. That's something that just can't carry over into film. Still, they didn't do an awful job converting it, and otherwise, everything that was good about the book was good about the movie. Suspenseful, complex, character-driven mystery. Wonderful.
Rating: 4.0
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