Hey, folks, can I, for a second here, recommend a bad movie to you?
When you get down to it, The Girl in the Spider's Web isn't terrible. It is an incredibly watchable, middling action-thriller, somewhere in the ballpark of a Bourne Legacy or a SWAT* or even a Jack Reacher. Thoroughly inoffensive filler**. It is the kind of James Bond-esque alsorand that I am particularly vulnerable to. And, if you're like me, and intellectually warped in this specific way, then you could have a worse time than checking out the latest addition of the Millennium series.
First of all-- the good-- it's great looking. Pedro Luque does a great job of elevating the material and giving the film a distinct look and tone.He makes Stockholm exactly as hostile and foreign as it needs to be. It's a city of bright sodium lamps and midday haze. It's one of the better noir cities that I've seen in recent memory. It's one of the reasons that this movie is as watchable as it is. It doesn't feel like a B-tier reboot at any point, because just look at it.
The real mark against the movie is that it is profoundly stupid. It won't admit it. It won't revel in it.
But even that is part of the fun. It's ludicrous in the ways that all of Hitchcock's best works are (admittedly without the Hitchcock charm which, hey, even old Al couldn't pull off every time). This is a movie where Lisbeth is doped up by a Russian mobster and then, while apparently dying, she manages to stumble onto some unnamed prescription med, smashes a bunch of pills up and then does a fat bump on the bathroom floor and then instantly recovers and goes on a car chase (while still doped to the gills with high-grade Soviet poison in her veins).
And you have to make a choice-- Am I going to go along with this act of profound silliness or am I going to watch something more reasonable like, I don't know, Michael Clayton?
Good work. Like me you chose to stick with it. Also, now Lisbeth is framed for murder for some reason, how is she going to get out of this jam?
If you, like me, are a sucker for these sorts of movies, these little thrillers that could, then you could do a hell of a lot worse than The Girl in the Spider's Web.
FURTHER OBSERVATIONS:
* In a kinder, gentler world, Lisbeth Salander would exist as a kind of R-rated anti-James Bond-- a gay female action-hero that uses her wits, exploits men, and, instead of going to meet the world, the world comes to meet her. To put an even finer point on it, I'd rather see a semi-annual Millennium-series movie than another fucking Marvel movie.
* As with the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the guy playing the journalist (sorry, I don't remember his name) is way too good-looking to be a journalist. As much as I love Daniel Craig, he's a leading man. He's a tough guy. He is not a journalist. It's so very American to cast a handsome man as a journalist. I think that is one thing that the original Swedish films got right. In reality, a journalist character should less James Bond and more Jimmy Breslin.
* Where's Noomi Rapace? I miss her. Bring Noomi back, damnit! Also, I think I'm maybe thinking of the one chick from Head On/Game of Thrones instead of Noomi, so I'll maybe get back to you on this one. . .
* The more I think on it, the more I also realize that we don't need more stories about women who have abuse as an origin story. There isn't a terrible lot of that sort of thing on screen in this movie, fortunately. But, you can't make a Lisbeth Salander movie without grappling with the fact that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is ostensibly a rape-revenge story.
* I'm 100% that's a Jin-Roh reference in the third act.
* Nice to see villains in a different kind of bondage gear for once. I mean, we all love gimp masks, but that's been played out since at last '92.
* I am a sucker for cathartic bon fires. Dunkirk did it. Blade Runner 2049 did it. Snatch kind of had one. It's a good image. Keep it up, movies!!
FOOTNOTES:
* Both are Jeremy Renner vehicles. Weird how those are the first two movies that came to mind.
** Filler-thriller-- is that a thing?
James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and a one-time private investigator. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.
