The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Poster

So, the directors of Hollywood have attempted to remake another foreign film without realising that these sorts of films are untouchable if they are foreign masterpieces (REC – Quarantine, REC – Quarantine 2). Unfortunately I cannot make this my opinion due to me not viewing the Swedish version of this film starring Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salamander.

This time around they have used the British lead Daniel Craig to portray the disgraced journalist Mikael Blomquist and the American starlet Rooney Mara (who I found out isn’t actually using her real name, which in actual fact is Patricia) as Lisbeth Salander. There are a couple of other big names in the film too, such as Stellan Skarsgard as Martin Vangar and Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vangar.

Let me just start out by saying that this film has a ridiculously brilliant opening credit, with CGI used throughout, and is very “James-Bond-Esque” length and feel about it, It certainly draws you in with loud music playing in the background. People are already saying that it’s worth going at the cinema just for the opening sequence. I have never said “Wow” after an opening sequence.

Anyway moving on towards the films plot. Lisbeth Salander is an extremely talented hacker and research assistant; she is given a small job at the start to research the disgraced Mikael Blomquist for a businessman Henrik Vangar (Head of Vangar Industries) who in turn wants to hire Mikael to investigate the murder of his niece Harriet Vangar. This is the basic outline of the story.

The themes in the film are highly sensitive in this film, themes such as Sexual violence, rape, love, persecution of women, hacking and torturing. So as you can see it’s quite a sensitive storyline and I will say now, some parts are not for the squeamish.

******SPOILER ******

(Highlight the text to see the spoiler)

Lisbeth has been abused throughout her life unfortunately, and due to her social status of being a recluse, people like her social worker take advantage of her sexually, it is shown through the first half of the film. In one of the scenes she is brutally raped by her acting guardian Nils Bjurman, he rapes her and in return gives her money for his entertainment because he has control over her bank accounts as she is not deemed responsible enough to look after her own accounts. The shock of this scene is quite high, and it isn’t done very tastefully (Not that rape is a tasteful subject in any instance, however I thought that this scene could have been somewhat more tasteful. It’s very raw and very emotional, I notice in the cinema that a lot of people found highly distressing, my fiancé included).

******SPOILER ENDS ******

Running along the same topic as above, there is a lot of nudity in this film, 90% of it, is completely and utterly nonsensical. Rooney Mara shows her top half about 3 or 4 times in the film, and if you were to take it out of the film it wouldn’t make any difference. Don’t get me wrong Im not one of those people that despises nudity in all films, but there certainly is a time and place for it, and unfortunately this isn’t it. And it truly hits the heights of absurdity when you see Rooney with absolutely nothing on her, right in front of Daniel Craig. People can sit there and say that it’s a metaphor of her opening up to him, when the only thing that its actually doing is showing the audience what a malnourished young lady Rooney Mara is, obviously taking into account that her character is supposed to be portrayed as malnourished individual. And YES! That was a rant.

Rooney Mara transformed into Lisbeth

Anyway, back to the story of the film, its okay, nothing new, mediocre at best. I think my opinion of this is like it because the films and books were hyped up so much that, for me it was okay at best and the two things that kept it going is because you want to know what happened to the niece of Henrik Vangar and Daniel Craig’s interesting acting skills. He is the one that keeps it together along with Rooney.

Maybe I am just being harsh about it but I just feel kinda……ripped off. Commercially it wasn’t a success with it costing just under $100 Million and it only racking in just over $100 million , so it wasn’t a particular financial success for such a large blockbuster (just a 5% return is not a lot in Hollywood) in other words this just proves that when the original is a foreign film, then Hollywood should just leave it alone, because it ruins the books and the films before its remake.

In the end it’s a little bit, “oh really, is that it”, it’s a slightly predictable ending, I guessed it with the first 30 mins and I haven’t read or seen the previous films.

The only redeeming factor about this film is that its soundtrack is nothing short of excellent, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross (Book of Eli Soundtrack). It’s a really hard and gritty soundtrack with 1 or 2 classics remixed.

I would still recommend people to see it, due to its high amount of publicity and OTT opening sequence but other than that, you could wait for a rent.

I would really like to see people’s opinion’s on this film, I just don’t see what the fascination is with it.

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

This is the second DVD I chose in the offer, along with “the infidel” and immediately like many other I was drawn in by 2 things:

The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus Poster

1.       The ensemble cast. Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Heath Ledger, Colin Farrell, Jude Law and of course Johnny Depp.

2.       The death of Heath Ledger. Like many people it was upsetting to see one of the worlds finest young actors die, however I wanted to see his performance post Dark Knight, to see if he was as good as he was in the Dark Knight.

When I first saw the trailer I didn’t think very much of it, however my fiancée persuaded me to watch it, unfortunately I was right with my first instincts, the ensemble cast are excellent and the acting that they provide for the viewer is nothing short of excellent, however this is where the positives stop.

I will start with a basic statement which popped into my head within the first 30 seconds:

“OH MY GOD!, THIS IS SO WEIRD”

I looked at my fiancée, she looked at me and we both mouthed

“WHAAAAAAAT THE HELL!”

Now, I know I said I was going to stop with the positives however, the one more positive I will say is that the film is beautiful on a high definition TV (I can’t speak for a standard television). The film is excellently shot and is one of the real stand out things about the movie.

The film isn’t bad, its just weird…………very weird. I think this distracts from the story itself, you are so overwhelmed by what is happening that you completely forget what the story is about.

Basically its about a travelling troupe including Christopher Plummer (Dr Parnassus), Lily Cole (Valentina), Andrew Garfield (Anton) and Vern Troyer (Percy), they each have their own roles, and initially I didn’t understand as to why they were doing what they were doing, until I realised that the characters are in fact portraying God (Christopher Plummer) and his disciples, then the devil pops up in to the story which changes the dynamic, he keeps an eye on this troupe, because God is trying to put together 12 disciples again to what I could gather end the war between good and evil. However Heath Ledger is found hanging from a bridge and God believes he could be a good disciple, however Heath’s character can’t remember anything, thus is useless, until the Devil proposes a game in which the first to 5 souls wins the war, from then on, all different manor of things happen.

It just gets weirder and weirder and weirder. There’s so much weird that its hard to follow.

Unfortunately it had no redeeming qualities, and to be quite honest I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, because it will just have you asking yourself questions, one of them being:

“Why!”