The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Reviews
August 30, 2018
The film is certainly faithful to every detail of the novel's intricate plot, which is fair enough, but does give it the feel of a plodding TV whodunit rather than a cinematic experience.
July 9, 2010
An engrossing and classically suspenseful story
June 30, 2010
Revel[s] in its seedier aspects ... while appropriating every aesthetic trope from the modern Hollywood thriller handbook.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
June 25, 2010
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a handsome thriller, anchored by an arresting performance in the title role by Noomi Rapace.
May 5, 2010
A chilling detective tale, a horrific sexual abuse drama and an overlong, emotional, tie-up-every-loose-end melodrama that is sure to be half an hour shorter when Hollywood remakes it without Swedish dialogue and probably without the cool Swedish edge.
Original Score: 3.5/4
April 22, 2010
Rapace's haunting, enigmatic Lisbeth is the element that leaves you eager for the next two installments. She's fantastic, and so is the movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
April 16, 2010
A bracing survey course on the mystery genre set in a Scandinavian landscape as cold as a killer's kiss.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
April 16, 2010
Appreciation of the film relies more on the performances than the problem-solving, and Rapace delivers a complicated and deliciously contrary performance that tattoos Lisbeth Salander straight onto the brain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
April 9, 2010
You don't mess with Lisbeth Salander. And you'd do well not to miss her, either.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
April 8, 2010
It's the tender rapport that develops between Lisbeth and the older Blomqvist that sustains our interest in this violent, overlong film.
Original Score: 3/4
April 6, 2010
The mismatched leads make a compelling pair, and director Niels Arden Oplev keeps the action relatively tight.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
April 2, 2010
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo grapples with far more than "whodunit." And it does a handy job of answering that question, too.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
April 2, 2010
This is not your mother's murder mystery, unless... she has an appallingly bleak vision of modern society that occasionally fixates on the historical misdeeds of the corporate/industrial world and the correction thereof.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
April 2, 2010
There's a lot to revel in, be provoked by and obsess over.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
April 1, 2010
For a full 152 minutes I sat in the theatre spellbound, and while I knew a lot of time was passing not once did I ever want to leave my seat as I was for all intents and purposes glued right to it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
March 29, 2010
The violence in this movie is so intense and upsetting and... I don't think actually serves the purposes of the storytelling or the points this movie wants to make.
March 25, 2010
Stieg Larsson's best-selling crime novel has all the makings of a cinematic thriller. As directed by Niels Arden Oplev in Swedish with English subtitles, Tattoo is mesmerizing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
March 22, 2010
Noomi Rapace throws herself into the title role, but something about the conception of her character, and about the far-reaching urgency of the sociopathic shocks behind the killing, smacks of a filmmaker pushing too hard.
March 19, 2010
Noomi Rapace more or less looks the part that the filmmakers don't let her fully play.
Original Score: 2/5
March 19, 2010
The author is a sharp social critic, so what his characters uncover isn't just crime, but a whole dark side to Swedish society -- not least a terrible, sadistic misogyny.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7.5/10