The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a challenging book to turn into a movie because so much of the book’s charm is Bloomkvist’s long, slow, twisting research process, and slowly getting to know Salander’s bizarre personality. I think that this book would have made a tremendous mini-series. Cramming the story into 150 minutes obviously requires a good deal of condensing. On the whole I think the filmmakers did a good job and made wise choices.

I think the casting of Blomkvist and Salander is really great. They got Bloomkvist damn near perfect, and while Salander does not have quiet the affect I always pictured, she is not far off. I do think that they made Salander a touch too reticent (she does talk a bit in the books) but despite this the character comes across very well in the film version. All the supporting performers are cast beautifully, in my opinion.

They captured the physical terrain (which is so evocative in the books) really well. The entire island is just hauntingly fabulous. I still can’t get over how close it all looks to how I had everything pictured from reading the book. I’m sure they used locations that Larsson scouted for the books, but it’s still shocking. The cinematography is beautiful.

Dramatically the film is very solid. The set up with Vanger is done well. I loved how they used still photographs in the movie, both dramatically, and to keep all of the many characters in order for the viewer. I think they trimmed the setup of Salander a bit too much – her relationship with Armansky is a really important and good part of the story which I missed from the movie – but they still did a good job with her. Some say the rape scene was done in an exploitative way. I think it was done really well; it’s shocking for sure, but the point is that Salander has had many really awful things happen to her. The climax didn’t quite have the punch of the book, but it was still good; it was way better (I might add) than similar scenes in recent Hollywood films.

I am a big fan of Stieg Larsson’s books, especially this first one, and I found this movie version to be so enjoyable I will probably add it to my movie collection. It’s out on Netflix: rent and enjoy!