The Girl in the Spider's Web

A fine script, but what can you do when Claire Foy doesn't even come close to brimming with the charisma of Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara. The film adaptation (both Swedish and American) of the Millennium series benefited in particular from its great cast, as well as its distinctive visual style. When you watch The Girl in the Spider's Web, you'll end up drawing those comparisons whether you like it or not, and with respect to the direction and acting, it's simply a weaker reheating of the previous films. Which sucks, because the story is very interesting. (23/02/2019)

Lisbeth Salander returns and is tasked with stealing an NSA program that its creator wants back. Unfortunately, members of a dangerous gang, who know Lisbeth better than she ever imagined, are also interested. The Girl in the Spider's Web is a lot less ambitious than the American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and settles for being an entertaining, modern spy thriller with a surprising amount of good action. It's a bit sillier than David Fincher's version, but not boring in the slightest, just different. The two hours in the cinema passed quite pleasantly for me though. (07/11/2018)

I haven't read David Lagercrantz's book, and I'm not going to. I'm annoyed by Americans constantly parasitizing on great works. I can get over it when it comes to film, but that’s as far as I go. I was curious to see how the creators would follow up on “Millennium,” but it turned out they didn't have the slightest problem with that. They went about it in the same way as an idiot taking a mental ability test - they shoved a square peg into a round hole. It didn’t quite fit, but the task was completed. Logic had to take a break sometimes, a few corners were cut, but I'm afraid I have seen much worse. (07/05/2019)

I’m not exactly a fan of Fincher’s take on Stieg Larsson’s first Millennium book (I prefer the Scandinavian version), but I appreciate this film for the quality of its depictions of the characters, refinedness and wit. The Girl in the Spider’s Web is well plotted and its story has great potential, but Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara made for a more interesting Lisbeth than Claire Foy, and Sverrir Gudnason would be a better fit for Fifty Shades of Grey than for the role of Mikael Blomkvist. Above all, this technically well-crafted thriller is more of an action flick full of genre clichés and stereotypical one-dimensional characters than a movie with a more detailed character psychology and Scandinavian atmosphere. (17/11/2018)

Holy crap, what pig wrote this script? Incredibly infantile dialogue, bizarre scene development, and nonsensical behavior from virtually everyone, everywhere. From the plot itself, where for some reason ("I thought I could trust her") a programmer approaches the protagonist to steal the NSA's missile launch program, which she accepts (?), to sequences like Lisbeth not being able to think of another way to meet Blomkvist that wouldn't, for example, stop the elevators in two buildings, to dialogue like "Give me her number!" "I'll never give it to you!" "You know she's probably sleeping with other girls?" "That bitch. Here's her number." The facepalm makes almost every scene entertaining in its own right for some reason, but if I'm giving anything an above average rating, it's once again because of the proof that Alvarez still holds his own as a top genre director. The action scenes and the cinematography especially are absolutely top notch, and some scenes (the sliding camera following Lisbeth and Mikael’s fall from the window, the car vs. the forest, and the one-shot from NSA headquarters) had me holding my breath at times. And that's what these films are supposed to be about in the first place. (08/02/2019)