a film by Niels Arden Oplev
A Swedish mystery and crime thriller adapted from the novel by Stieg Larsson, the first book in his Millennium series.
Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist with the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case against industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and is sentenced to three months in prison. Blomkvist is under covert surveillance by Lisbeth Salander, a troubled but brilliant 24-year-old hacker from a security firm. She delivers her report on him to Dirch Frode, a lawyer for the powerful Vanger Group. Blomkvist is then invited to a meeting with industrialist Henrik Vanger, who hires him to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished on Children's Day in 1966. Henrik not only believes that Harriet was murdered, but that a member of the Vanger family is responsible. He shows him a collection of framed single dried flowers that he had received from Harriet on his birthdays. Strangely, he has continued to receive them every birthday since and he suspects that the sender is Harriet's murderer.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth's probationary guardian is incapacitated by a stroke, and she is introduced to his replacement, a lawyer named Nils Bjurman, who takes control over her finances. One night, she asks for money to replace her broken laptop. Bjurman, a sexual sadist, forces Lisbeth to perform oral sex on him in exchange for a fraction of the money she needs. Bjurman eventually rapes Lisbeth, who secretly videotapes the attack, and later returns to his apartment. After torturing Bjurman, she takes control, allowing her to regain access to her own finances and to terminate his guardianship over her in a year's time. Failure to respect her demands will result in her releasing the evidence of the rape to the media. While he is secured she tattoos Bjurman's abdomen with the words "I am a sadist pig and a rapist". Later, she hacks into Blomkvist's computer to continue monitoring him.
Blomkvist moves on to the Vanger estate and learns that Henrik's three brothers were all members of the Swedish Nazi Party. Harriet's father, Gottfried, was an abusive alcoholic who drowned the year before his daughter's disappearance. Inside Harriet's bible, Blomkvist finds a list of five names alongside what appear to be phone numbers. Police Inspector Morell informs him that his original investigation was unable to decipher them. He had tried reaching all possible combinations of the numbers, in vain. Using photographs taken during the Children's Day parade, Blomkvist learns that Harriet saw someone that day who may have been her killer. After hacking into his computer, Lisbeth finds and decodes the numeric clues, discovering that the numbers relate to verses from the Book of Leviticus concerning divine retribution.
Lisbeth discloses the results of her research in an e-mail to Blomkvist, thus revealing, intentionally, that she has hacked his computer and has been monitoring him. Upon discovering this, Blomkvist is directed by Dirch Frode to Lisbeth's apartment. He convinces her to help him with the case, and they embark on the trail of a serial killer whose crimes stretch back to 1949 in towns all over Sweden. Lisbeth finds herself attracted to Blomkvist, the first man whom she can trust and who treats her as an equal, and they become lovers while they are working together.
At a meeting with the Vanger family, during which he is urged to abandon the case, Blomkvist notices Harriet's cousin Cecilia wearing Harriet's necklace. Cecilia asserts that she inherited it from her sister, Anita. Blomkvist then realises that the indistinct photo Henrik had given him of Harriet is actually that of Anita. Sometime later, while jogging in the woods, he is shot at by an unknown gunman but escapes serious injuries.
The following day, Inspector Morell reveals that a set of initials from Harriet's diary match the name of a woman who had worked for Gottfried Vanger. As the women all had Jewish names, Blomkvist and Lisbeth believe their murders were motivated by anti-Semitism. They suspect the reclusive Harald Vanger to be the culprit, as the two other Vanger brothers had already died by the time she disappeared. Lisbeth searches through Vanger's business records to trace Harald to the crime scenes, while Blomkvist breaks into his house. There, Harald confronts Blomkvist, but Harriet's brother, Martin, shows up and instead escorts Blomkvist to his home. When Blomkvist reveals what he has uncovered, Martin drugs him. In the meantime, Lisbeth discovers that Martin and his father were responsible for the murders, finding a picture of the two together. In it, Martin's blue sweater matches the one on the man who scared Harriet in the Children's Day parade photo. Lisbeth returns to the cottage to find Blomkvist missing.
Blomkvist wakes to find himself bound in Martin's cellar. Martin boasts of decades of rape and murder, but denies killing Harriet. While he is garroting Blomkvist, Lisbeth appears and attacks the killer with a golf club. She frees Blomkvist, but Martin flees in his car and Lisbeth gives chase on her motorcycle. Martin clips a truck and his car rolls down an embankment. When Lisbeth arrives at the wreck, he pleads for help, but she leaves him to die when the car catches fire. The incident reminds Lisbeth of a moment in her youth when she splashed petrol in the face of a man sitting in a car, then igniting it and watching him burn.
Blomkvist later meets with Henrik and Morell to inform them that Martin did not kill Harriet. Returning to his cottage, he finds a note from Lisbeth, revealing Harriet's whereabouts. Blomkvist flies to Australia and discovers Harriet living under her dead cousin Anita's name. He returns her to Sweden to be reunited with Henrik. In his office, she reveals that she killed her father, who, along with Martin, had been sexually abusing her. Fearing for her life when she saw Martin at the Children's Day parade, she fled the estate with Anita's help.
Blomkvist then serves his prison term. Lisbeth visits him and furnishes him with secret financial records that reveal Wennerström's complicity in drug trafficking and black market arms dealing, which is more incriminating than his previous evidence against him. Blomkvist publishes a new story on Wennerström, who subsequently kills himself, and launches Blomkvist and Millennium to national prominence. Lisbeth hacks into Wennerström's off-shore bank account, steals millions of Swedish kronor, and travels to the Cayman Islands.
No comments:
Post a Comment