The novels of the late Stieg Larsson are the little Saabs that could: These three posthumously published thrillers — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest — might have been nothing more than an entertaining genre-fiction exercise, the sort of thing that might, at best, achieve some sort of cult status. Instead, they’ve become the books that everyone and their grandmothers seem to be reading, and the Swedish movie based on the first book in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, became a surprise U.S. hit last year. Hollywood is, of course, preparing its own David Fincher-directed version, but those of us who are allegedly in the know are supposed to automatically prefer the Swedish version, with its dour approach to torture and violence and its efficient “He did it because he’s crazy, that’s why” wrap-up. Because the movie is long, colorless, uncompromising and, well, Swedish, it’s got to be better than any future American version, right?
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REVIEW: Girl Who Played with Fire Goes Through the Tiresome Swede-Goth Motions
