The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
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The story
Journalist Mikael Blomkvist, co-owner of the magazine Millennium, faces a looming prison sentence after losing a high-profile libel case against billionaire Hans-Erik Wennerström. Simultaneously, a brilliant but troubled hacker named Lisbeth Salander is commissioned to run a background check on Blomkvist. The situation shifts when Henrik Vanger, the patriarch of an affluent family, hires Blomkvist to investigate the 1966 disappearance of his niece, Harriet. Suspecting foul play within his own family, Vanger seeks the truth about Harriet's vanishing, leading Blomkvist and Salander into a dark web of family secrets and potential crimes.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Journalist Mikael Blomkvist faces prison after losing a libel case against billionaire Hans-Erik Wennerström. While Lisbeth Salander, a hacker, is tasked with a background check on him, Henrik Vanger hires Blomkvist to find his niece Harriet, who disappeared in 1966. Salander, who has recently secured her independence by blackmailing her abusive guardian Nils Bjurman, joins Blomkvist. They discover biblical references in Harriet's diary linked to unsolved murders with antisemitic motives within the Vanger family. Their investigation leads them to Martin, Harriet's brother, who captures Blomkvist and reveals he and his late father committed the serial murders. Salander rescues Blomkvist, and Martin dies in a car crash. They eventually discover Harriet is alive in Australia, having escaped abuse. The film ends with Blomkvist publishing an exposé on Wennerström, leading to his downfall, while Salander starts a new life with Wennerström's stolen funds.
- Original title
- Män som hatar kvinnor
- First release year
- 2009
- Runtime (minutes)
- 153
- Production countries
- Sweden; Denmark; Germany
- Original languages
- Swedish
- Directors
- Niels Arden Oplev
- Writers
- Rasmus Heisterberg · screenplay; Nikolaj Arcel · screenplay
- Cast and characters
- Michael Nyqvist · Mikael Blomkvist; Noomi Rapace · Lisbeth Salander; Lena Endre · Erika Berger; Sven-Bertil Taube · Henrik Vanger; Peter Haber · Martin Vanger; Peter Andersson · Nils Bjurman; Marika Lagercrantz · Cecilia Vanger; Ingvar Hirdwall · Dirch Frode
- Genres
- crime thriller; mystery thriller
- Themes
- revenge; violence against women; incest; patricide
- Tone and mood
- graphic violence; compelling thriller
- Premise and plot tags
- crime novel; mystery novel; serial killer; journalist; hacker
- Source material / true-story basis
- the 2005 novel, the first entry in his Millennium series, by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson
- Franchise connections
- Millennium
- Content notes
- rape; violence
- Reception
- The film was well received by critics, with a normalized score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and a weighted average of 76 on Metacritic.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 85% · review count: 192; Metacritic · score: 76 · review count: 36
- Production trivia
- The film was expanded into a six-part television miniseries the following year.; The first part of the miniseries attracted 1.2 million viewers, the largest audience of a foreign series at Canal+ that year.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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