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here's a review of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO that i did for the new pop culture site critical mob started by a friend.



THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a remarkably prescient pop cultural phenomenon and a thrilling piece of moviemaking. In the film, based on the first novel of the late Stieg Larson's bestselling Millennium trilogy, corrupt bankers and industrialists run roughshod over society, pillaging, stealing and raping whenever they see fit. It takes a pair of outcasts, Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a disgraced journalist, and Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace), a 24 year-old punk hacker with the titular tattoo, to take them on. This is ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN for the 21st Century. Brought to a remote Swedish island to solve the 40 year-old disappearance of a teenage girl, Blomkvist and Lisbeth uncover a plot involving a powerful family that blends greed, fascism and plain old-fashioned psychopathy.

Director Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation unfolds with precise pacing and often terrifying suspense. After some expository missteps in the opening act, by its midpoint, the film settles into a gripping and relentless rhythm and doesn't letup until the mystery is unraveled. But THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO isn't simply a taut potboiler; it also works as an indictment of the Swedish elite's complicity with fascism and a patient character study of two unlikely heroes. The other two books in Larson's trilogy have already been adapted into films in Sweden and will be released this year in the US. As expected, a Hollywood remake is also in the works.