I’m “biast” (con): not sure this needed to be rebooted
I have not read the source material
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
Punk hacker Lisbeth Salander is back. But I’m not really sure why, and I don’t think The Girl in the Spider’s Web does either. Based on a novel that was not written by Dragon Tattoo author Stieg Larsson, this is a rote crime action thriller — very car chase! such gunshots! — that drains its protagonist of much of the raw power that has made her so fascinating in the past even as it thinks it is enlightening us as to how she became the fiercely driven vigilante that she is.
Any mild interest this small and inconsequential movie engenders is solely down to Claire Foy (First Man, Unsane), taking over as “the girl” (she’s 34 years old), though she isn’t given much opportunity to do more than stalk around and look lost. (Lost is the last thing Salander has ever been or ever should be.) Perhaps she’s mystified that director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) decided it would be a good idea to include both a “Salander showering” and “Salander bathing” scene within the first 30 minutes of the film? It takes a special kind of Hollywood tone-deafness to tell a tale that makes sure to underscore that it is about a woman who gets revenge on men who hurt women, and then objectify that same woman anyway.
Ironically, the macguffin-driven plot here has nothing to do with hurting men who hurt women, and everything to do with running around after a computer program that Salander hacked from the NSA and then was incredibly lax about keeping safe — she had the only copy until some bad guys stole it from her — even though it’s basically the digital key for setting off nukes wherever you want. A lot of ridiculous coincidence is deployed in order to tie this in with an exploration of Salander’s childhood and her formative traumas and ensure that both threads conclude neatly and simultaneously.
Other plot-based bafflement arises when it makes no sense that the guy who wrote that nuke-launching program (Stephen Merchant: Sherlock Gnomes, Logan) would be skulking around trying to get his work back from the NSA — he hired Salander for the job — with his young son (Christopher Convery) in tow, a second macguffin ready to be kidnapped and used as a pawn. I think we’re meant to think that Salander feels some sort of affinity with the kid, but I deduce this only circumstantially: the movie spends almost no time developing relationships between any of the characters.
Bonus mysteries: Why would Alvarez cast the tremendous LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out, Snowden) — as an NSA guy who travels to Stockholm to hunt down the missing program — if the director wasn’t going to utilize his awesomeness? Ditto Vicky Krieps (3 Days in Quiberon), who owned Phantom Thread, appearing here as a woman who is maybe supposed to be jealous that her boyfriend (husband?), journalist Mikael Blomkvist, is back in touch with Salander, and yet she barely appears at all? Also, why is it that Blomkvist, who was originally a full generation older than Salander, suddenly has only a few years on her, as portrayed by 40-year-old Sverrir Gudnason (Borg vs McEnroe)? (There’s almost no reason for Blomkvist to be present in the story at all, in fact.)
It’s all quite bewildering, which is the biggest emotion The Girl in the Spider’s Web evokes, other than boredom. Hacking is sorcery here — it can pull off whatever impossible trick the plot requires — but that’s the only magic to be found.
see also:
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Man som hatar kvinnor) (review)
• The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes) (review)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) (review)
Had you bothered to do any research at all then you’d know that Vicky Krieps’ character, Erike Berger, is a co-worker in the Millennium magazine who is married and has AFFAIRS with Mikael. She is neither his girlfriend nor his wife; she is his mistress. This review is filled with vague statements!
If a film requires “research” in order to understand something as basic as what the relationship between two characters is, it’s probably not very good.
Oh, no, honey, that’s not how this works.
There’s a scene in the film early on in which he asks her something like what they’re doing that evening, and she says that she’s having dinner with her husband. And then that evening (or so it seems to be that same evening, or perhaps the next morning), she’s there in the place where he lives walking around naked under a half-open robe. I don’t know any other way to interpret that other than that he is her husband and she was flirting or bantering by suggesting earlier that he *wasn’t* her husband.
And anyway, it does not matter. She’s barely a character here. There’s no reason for her to even be here. It’s not part of the story.
Erika was wearing a wedding ring, Mikael wasn’t. In the book (and this movie, I will admit, is nothing like it), she runs off with Mikael after having dinner with her husband. Her husband knows about her affairs.
I will admit to accidentally shriek-laughing in the office, embarrassingly, upon reading your “Guys, I’ma hack in and boost our Rotten Tomatoes score” joke. So thanks for that — have a nice day then,
FYI, it is very common for men who aren’t from the US to *not* wear a wedding ring. To a large extent, I still hear men wearing one to be mocked for it.
Blomkvist isn’t American, Sargenta.
Exactly. So assuming Mikael *is* her husband isn’t out of line.
I don’t understand why every one of the Lisbeth Salander movies* thinks Mikael and Erike’s relationship is important enough to include. It seems like a C plot, at best, that never leads anywhere, either on its own in relation to the central plot or story. I suppose maybe it’s just a part of the titilation factor present in all of these stories – like, “ooooh, look, Erike is in a non-monogamous marriage**, with Mikael as her secondary, but oooh, look how upset she gets about who Mikael is fucking, how exciting!”
* I’ve seen both versions of Dragon Tattoo, and I think I’ve seen Played with Fire, but I can’t recall any details.
** not, as Veronica claims, having “AFFAIRS”. Nor is she his “mistress”. More like an on-again/off-again couple, or maybe a FWB situation.
Well, yeah. But, I had to comment on the wedding ring thing. I mean, some cultures don’t use a wedding ring for either half of a couple.
I wasn’t looking at jewelry, and anyway, as noted, plenty of people who are married do not wear rings.
I also don’t care what’s in the book. A movie has to stand on its own.
I don’t see how that contradicts Sargenta’s point, Ms. Mathis.
She just pointed out that it’s not uncommon for men who aren’t American to not wear a wedding ring. Pointing out that the character in question is not American does not prove her wrong.
Honestly, this seems like an improvement. The ridiculous age difference between Lizbeth and Mikael always left me wondering, by the time they start fucking each other, if these characters had been watching the same movie I had. Why would Lizbeth have any interest at all, and why isn’t Mikael disgusted with himself, considering all he’s uncovered by that point?
All valid questions, but whatever their relationship was before has been upended, and for what?
Er, sorry, didn’t mean that to be a reply to you. :-/