SELECTED SHORTS

Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomkvist, a soon-to-be-jailed
disgraced Stockholm journalist who’s on the bad end of a libel suit
initiated by a corporate bigwig. Before he goes to the pokey, Mikael is
hired by industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) to track down
a woman who has been missing since 1966 when she was 16. Meanwhile, the
emotionally troubled Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a researcher for
a security firm and the title’s inked lass, has issues with her
sexually deviant probation officer (Peter Andersson in a sleazy
creepshow role) with a taste for the rough stuff, which provides
viewers with an early tip-off regarding the sicko places this movie is
headed. By the midway point, Mikael and Lisbeth join forces to puzzle
out the disappearance, which touches upon the Vanger clan’s connections
to Nazism, misogyny and serial slayers. As Lisbeth remarks early on,
“Everyone has secrets.” 

There won’t be any spoilers here, aside from Mikael’s revelation
that “the secret to good meatballs is to wet your fingers.” Director
Niels Arden Oplev choreographs the various plot turns in a slick,
fast-paced fashion that belies the movie’s whopping length, with one
enthralling montage as Mikael examines old photographs that eerily
recalls a classic sequence from Antonioni’s Blow Up. The frigid
widescreen landscapes from director of photography Eric Kress also lend
a touch of austere beauty to this twisty procedural.

The odd-couple chemistry between its leads also pays off, with
Nyqvist’s dogged sleuth forming a sly counterpoint to Rapace’s
goth-geared Lisbeth, replete with spiked collar and a Joan Jett
attitude. Nyqvist and Rapace have already filmed the sequels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest,
and if both are as accomplished as this Oplev’s entertaining crime
melodrama, art-house audiences will yell in approval, “Skoal!”