The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Män som hatar kvinnor (2009)

I had only seen 1 Swedish film before, the quiet excellent Evil, and I didn't know the book at all, but armed with a five star Empire review I was prepared to give The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a shot - and I'm so glad I did! It's hands down the best 2.5hr Swedish thriller I've ever seen! And also one of the best movies I've seen, and it just goes to show, after Japanese Ponyo and French Micmacs, that foreign language films can be absolute gems. 

Dragon Tattoo is a (cliché alert!) real edge-of-the-seat thriller. It's occasionally brutal, sometimes funny, a little disturbing, and very, very exciting. It's nominally a murder mystery, and it's so much more. The central characters are a discredited journalist and a paroleé computer hacker with an abusive handler, and the way the come together to get involved in a 40 year old disappearance has so many layers and intriguing characters, so many twists and revelations the extended running time flew by. 

Noomi Rapace's titular Girl is such an interesting, conflicted character. We don't learn much about her background here, apparently all will be revealed in the sequels, and that intrigue adds to her mystique. Her interaction with Michael Nyqvist's investigative journalist is believable and very different from a traditional Hollywood relationship. 

I didn't guess any of the twists, but looking back, there were clues (as well as aspects of the plot that don't hold up to scrutiny), so the way the film is constructed and plotted is so tight you'd think there would be no time for character development and the like, but that's just not the case. If there's an American remake I'll give it a wide berth, but I'll certainly be booking tickets for the Swedish sequels that are due out by the end of the year.