THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

The first in a trilogy based on the Millenium trilogy by dead swedish author Stieg Larsson, and a book very popular with the termites that pack London's tubes. For the past year or so, everyone seems to have been reading this, something about vampires or the latest load of shite by Dan "A.D.D" Brown, whom I'm convinced isnt an actual human, but some kind of robotic literary experiment by a cabal of market researchers and data analysts huddled in a bunker somewhere. I read the first 100 pages or so of the Larrson book last christmas...didnt grab me particularly, seemed like a rather slow-moving euro version of  a Jonathan Kellerman murder-mystery, except with a journalist and a sapphic hacker tag-team instead of a psychologist and a man-fancying cop. What about the movie though? Well it's 2 and a half hours long, and with not much going on for a lot of that duration, save dramatic montages of people squinting at laptops and staring intensely at 40 year old photographs. The story involves the previously mentioned sweaty journalist and a gothy, slightly dysfunctional lesbian (wiv a dragon tattoo, yeah) trying to solve a decades-old missing-presumed-dead case involving a young girl in a rural swedish community of rich elderly coffin-dodgers.

 I have never used the words "lesbian", "arse-nude" and "gratuitous" in the same sentence before, but I will be soon. The first half of the movie contains some unexpectedly harsh abuse and violence involving the girl, really quite graphic and unsavoury. It also contains an agreeably gratuitous scene where she rises arse-nude from her lesbian-filled bed to answer the door. She's vaguely attractive in an undernourished, tomboyish way, if you can look past the hairy armpits and child-like frame. She's certainly more interesting than the generic middle-aged journalist, who's alternates between being dull, slightly creepy and generally a bit useless. The movie is a slow burner, but it's also slick, beautifully shot and despite its length, managed to keep my wandering fingers away from the fast forward button. Worth a look. Apparently in the works for a Hollywood remake as well, shock surprise. Will they include the scene where one character gets what looks like an massive glade plug-in rammed up their chocolate? We'll find out in a year or so.