The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story
Starring: Claire Foy, Lakeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Sverrir Gudnason
Director: Fede Alvarez
Based on the book "The Girl in the Spider’s Web" by David Lagercrantz based on characters created by Stieg Larsson
I’m surprised this movie exists. David Fincher already tried to adapt Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy in 2011 with Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. They only made it through book one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and earned Rooney Mara an Oscar nomination in the process. The film was a modest success but not enough for Sony to continue with the talent involved. They instead waited a few years for a full reboot with a new actress and director. Was it worth it?
We open on Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy), a short time after the events of the first film. She has moved on from her relationship with Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) and is instead focusing her time on vigilante justice, hurting men who hurt women. Soon she finds herself on the run after agreeing to help Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) retrieve a program he created that could threaten the safety of the entire world. This attracts the attention of NSA Agent Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) as well as a shady organization known only as The Spiders. As Lisbeth finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into a twisted web of deception, she soon finds she has a more personal connection to the crimes at hand.
Let’s get the good out of the way first. Claire Foy is fantastic as Lisbeth. The actress skyrocketed to fame on Netflix’s The Crown, but has been given several well reviewed roles recently in Unsane as well as First Man. This is probably the best she’s been on screen, however I haven’t seen The Crown so I can’t compare her work in that. Director Fede Alvarez and Cinematographer Pedro Luque also give the film a crisp look and are able to put together a pretty decent set piece. I do wish they had played to his strengths a little more and amped up some of the horror.
The film is a total tonal shift from Fincher’s film, which is fine, however there is a strong push to turn Lisbeth into Jason Bourne. Going from moody mystery to essentially an action/spy film is a lot to ask of an audience, regardless of their feelings towards Fincher’s film. Lisbeth uses technology and gadgets to get herself out of sticky situations, which makes sense as an elite hacker but it just didn’t work for me. There is also a very interesting angle where she is punishing men who hurt women that is started in the beginning of the film but is never revisited.
There is really no purpose to Lakeith Stanfield’s character. His character felt more necessary because the script said so, not because he was organic to the story. He is threatened by Swedish authorities to only be a tourist and nothing more when he starts his chase of Lisbeth. Then he immediately begins to wander freely and is never really bothered again until he needs to become a necessary plot point.
In the end, I feel like there wasn’t anything new or interesting enough to completely reboot the series. The plot gets very convoluted and gets very boring as things should be kicking into gear. See the film for Claire Foy and not much else.
C-