BEFORE: I've hit the second round of Swedish films for this month, the three "Millennium" films based on the books of Stieg Larsson, released in Swedish. For some reason, Hollywood kind of missed the ball on these, they only made a film based on the first book in the trilogy, and then waited too long to make a sequel, and instead followed up years later with a book based on another author's sequel to the trilogy. It's bizarre, and I'd like to know why Hollywood didn't make the whole trilogy, because that's left my knowledge of the series incomplete. (Sure, I could just go read the books, but who has that kind of time?) So now I'm re-watching the first film, in Swedish this time, just so I can then watch the two sequels. Honestly, I don't remember much about the plot of the English version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", that was like eight years ago that I watched it. But I watched "The Girl in the Spider's Web" just last year, that one's a little fresher in my memory.
I realized too late that I could have connected directly from the Ingmar Bergman chain to here, the actress who played Fanny and Alexander's mother in the last film in that chain also appears here. Another actress, Gunnel Lindblom, was in several Bergman films like "Scenes from a Marriage", and she's in this film, too. I guess there are only so many Swedish actors, after all. Lindblom passed away a few days ago, at the age of 89.
Noomi Rapace carries over from "Unlocked". And just yesterday, I said there was no way to watch both an Irish-themed film for St. Patrick's Day and also "Wonder Woman 1984" in March, I would have to choose one or the other. This is now not true, as I've discovered that if I cut my romance chain short by two days, I can link from the new last film to "Angela's Ashes" in time for St. Patrick's Day, and from there I can see a way to get to "Wonder Woman" about five days later. Drawing up these charts on scrap paper really helps sometimes. And just for fun, I picked one of my two Easter movies and I've already proven I can get there by Easter, which is April 4. So now I kind of have to do this - I've got a path that will hit three big benchmarks in March and April.
But first I have to finish this month, that's the three Swedish films from Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy and then one more action film, then I'll total up the stats for January.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (2011) (Movie #1,441), "The Girl in the Spider's Web" (Movie #3,558)
THE PLOT: A journalist is aided by a young female hacker in his search for the killer of a woman who has been missing for forty years.
AFTER: Wow, I really forgot a LOT about the first version of this film. But then, there was a lot to forget! It's a very rich story, full of ex-Nazis, missing people, serial killers, rapists, all that juicy stuff. Or maybe there's some stuff in the Swedish version that didn't make it into the American version, or got really toned down. I'll have to do a side-by-side comparison of the plots listed on Wikipedia to be sure. But here's the basic plot outline:
Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist has been sued for libel, after an article ran in his magazine about a corrupt billionaire financier - so he's scheduled to spend six months in prison, and takes time off from his job. At the same time, hacker Lisbeth Salander is hired by a security firm to get the dirt on him, and she clones/hijacks his computer to do so. This results in him getting hired by the patriarch of the Vanger family to spend the next few months on their remote island, investigating the disappearance of his niece, which happened in 1966, during a holiday called Children's Day, when the entire extended Vanger family was on the island, so Henrik Vanger suspects that one of his family members killed Harriet, but he doesn't know which one. The killer's been taunting him every year by mailing him a pressed flower, like Harriet used to make for him.
OK, a couple of things. Why wait so long to hire an investigator? Doesn't this cold evidence trail get a little colder, and therefore harder to investigate, every year? Why NOW, just because an experienced journalist got laid off, and suddenly has a lot of free time? On top of that, why hire a really good hacker to investigate the investigator, why not skip a step and put the really good hacker to work on solving the case? I mean, we're going to get there anyway, why not get there sooner? Just putting that out there.
I guess Lisbeth's got her own problems, her guardian has just passed away and the court has issued her a new one, and he's a sexist rapist who won't give her access to her own money, which she needs to buy a new computer, unless he gets sexual favors in return from her. And so here's the connection to the Bergman films, because this rapidly turns into another installment of "Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Swedish people?" Oh, sure, some of them seem very nice on the surface level, but even the rich ones live out on these isolated islands where they've managed to go slowly mad over the years. And a lot of these Swedes have torture basements or murder sheds, so what is going on? Just to be safe, I'd avoid eating any of those delicious Swedish meatballs until we get to the bottom of this, because you just never know.
I saw this again and again in the Bergman films - everybody's got a story about a strict father or stepfather, or a family member that was abusive or short-tempered or even incestuous, and then there's a negative on the next generation, or even the one after that. Wasn't that nice old professor in "Wild Strawberries" in love with his cousin? Yeah, that's not good - that probably messed him up, and then he had a terrible marriage after that, he was estranged from his son, and he probably had the hots for his daughter-in-law when they went on that long car trip together. That woman in "Through a Glass Darkly" had weird visions and fooled around with her brother, and then the artist character in "Hour of the Wolf" went mad and shot his wife, then ran off into the woods. I think the whole population of Sweden needs some therapy, maybe it's the six months of Seasonal Affected Disorder every winter, or living in isolation on those remote islands, away from decent human society. Just a theory.
Anyway, Lisbeth gets her revenge on her guardian, gains access to her own money, and then I guess because she's shared a computer with Blomkvist, she tracks him down again (wait, I think he tracks her down...) and they work on the investigation together. They do find evidence that a serial killer has been at work for decades, taking his inspiration from the Book of Leviticus, and enacting biblical-style punishments on who he perceives to be the biggest sinners across Sweden. How he FOUND these sinners is another question, but thankfully the Vanger Group saved all their receipts going back to the 1940's, so it's forensic accounting to the rescue as they try to figure out which family member took a bunch of business trips to certain cities on certain dates.
Finally, after the mystery is solved - actually, two mysteries because the crimes that Blomkvist and Salander uncovered were sort of just tangential to the one they were hired to solve - hacker Lisbeth ends up giving Mikael the evidence he needed in the first place, proving that the billionaire financier was indeed corrupt in the first place. This is great, our hero turned out to be right after all, but this happens after the fact - couldn't he have been given this evidence before he spent six months in a minimum-security prison? I mean, great, his reputation is restored, but that conviction and prison time is still on his permanent record.
Also starring Michael Nyqvist (last seen in "John Wick"), Lena Endre (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Björn Granath (ditto), Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Haber, Peter Andersson (last seen in "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"), Marika Lagercrantz, Ingvar Hirdwall, Ewa Fröling (last seen in "Fanny and Alexander"), Michalis Koutsogiannakis, Annika Hallin, Tomas Köhler, Gunnel Lindblom (last seen in "Scenes from a Marriage"), Gösta Bredefeldt, Stefan Sauk, Jacob Ericksson, Julia Sporre, Tehilla Blad, Sofia Ledarp, David Dencik (last seen in "The Snowman"), Reuben Sallmander, Alexandra Hummingson, Fredrik Ohlsson, Georgi Staykov, Yasmine Garbi, Willie Andréason, Nina Norén.
RATING: 7 out of 10 pieces of Nazi memorabilia
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