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THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

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the girl in the spider's web (2018) movie

Genre | Crime Thriller

Classification | MA 15+

Running time | 115 minutes

Released | 8 November 2018

cast

Claire Foy ... Lisbeth Salander
Sylvia Hoeks ... Camilla Salander
Lakeith Stanfield ... Edwin Needham
Stephen Merchant ... Frans Balder

director

Fede Alvarez

writer

Jay Basu ... (screenplay by) &
Fede Alvarez ... (screenplay by) and
Steven Knight ... (screenplay by)

David Lagercrantz ... (based on the book by)

Stieg Larsson ... (based on the characters by)

cinematographer

Pedro Luque

music

Roque Baños

film editor

Tatiana S. Riegel

box office result

Worldwide $? million

Australia $? million

North America $? million

the best dialogue

Camilla Salander: Are you not Lisbeth Salander, the righter of wrongs? The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? The girl who hurts men who hurt women? All those lucky ladies. Do you remember that morning? For sixteen years I've been watching you. Why did you help everyone but me, sister?

Husband: Who the hell are you?
Lisbeth Salander: [Lisbeth knocks the massive statue in front of her, which has been hooked up to a rope that goes around the man's foot and pulls him up hanging upside down] I'm a fan of yours. A CEO who beat up two prostitutes, but then got acquitted in court yesterday.
Husband: Get me down!
Lisbeth Salander: And now I'll be transferring 20% of your bank account to these two girls...
Wife: You won't get away with this, I'm calling Delta Security!
Lisbeth Salander: ...the rest I'm transferring to your wife. Account number?
Husband: Don't!
Wife: 5-1-9-1-2.
Lisbeth Salander: Good. Take your child and leave, he won't hurt you again. As for you, your friend Mr. Chan has bankrolled your company for years. You also carried out an affair with his wife. Isn't this her?
[Lisbeth shows him footage on her phone of him having sex with Chan's wife]
Husband: YOU BITCH! I'll make you fucking pay for this, you cunt!
Lisbeth Salander: Shut up! Now hear this, the video is in my possession on this phone. If you try to contact your wife again, or if anything unexpected should happen to her, this video will be sent to him! Got it?
Husband: [after being tased by Lisbeth and left suspended upside down] Who are you? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

Fired from the National Security Agency, Frans Balder recruits hacker Lisbeth Salander to steal FireWall, a computer program that can access codes for nuclear weapons worldwide. The download soon draws attention from an NSA agent who traces the activity to Stockholm. Further problems arise when Russian thugs take Lisbeth's laptop and kidnap a math whiz who can make FireWall work. Now, Lisbeth and an unlikely ally must race against time to save the boy and recover the codes to avert disaster.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 8 November 2018
Pop Movee Rating ⭐️⭐️ ½

It’s hard to know what to make of any film based on the popular MILLENNIUM series novels, originally created by Stieg Larsson and, more recently, David Lagercrantz... David Fincher’s 2011 adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, was a solid effort with great atmosphere but was slow-moving and seriously long (158 minutes) The best thing about it was the Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross music that helped to create the unrelenting sense of dread the film worked hard to create... The Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyquist 2009 trilogy of films lifted the profile of Larsson's literary work to a larger audience but these Swedish productions didn’t achieve massive commercial success beyond highlighting the skill of the two lead actors.

The latest film in the series, THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB, attempts to address the slow-moving, overlong, limited commercial potential issue of its predecessors, clocking in with a relatively short 115 minute running time, placing emphasis mostly on action and movement.

The downside to this slimmer approach is that character and exposition take a back seat. This is problematic for a film that is based upon the fourth book in a series, where a substantial mythology has already been built around the central characters, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. It’s also an unusual move to jump from the first to the fourth book because so much is revealed about Salander in books two and three.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB was published in 2015 and is the first MILLENNIUM story not written by Stieg Larsson, who passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack in 2004 after climbing up a set of stairs at his work. Working under the close supervision of the Larrson Estate, author David Lagercrantz penned a more traditional story, focussed on geopolitics rather than the characters of Salander or Blomkvist. The film pares the book back even further…

After a disturbing opening prologue set at the Salander home on the outskirts of Stockholm, the film introduces audiences the third incarnation of the adult Lisbeth Salander, this time played by THE CROWN actress Claire Foy. Things seem to be going the way fans of the Larsson books would expect… Lisbeth is up to her old tricks, breaking into the home of a high-profile, woman abusing businessman. She traps the man in an elaborate snare and proceeds to deconstruct his entire life in a matter of minutes.

However, this scene goes to the heart of what is wrong with THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB...

While the sentiment of Salander’s actions are entirely appropriate, the ease with which the character executes this “sting” is preposterous, robbing the film of any realism so early that the only way forward is to make every subsequent action of consequence more elaborate than the previous.

If this were a JAMES BOND or MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE film it wouldn’t matter. The audience has come to expect absurdity as a matter of course. To this point (in the three prior MILLENNIUM stories), the vengeance Salander has meted out against perpetrators of heinous acts has been brutal, like a blunt force instrument. Her modus operandi in the new film, while more eloquent, feels like it’s staged for the camera. Her punishment of the businessman is achieved too easily and changes the very nature of the Salander character.

There’s no doubt that some of Salander’s actions in the film will reflect how she was written in Lagercrantz’s novel, but there’s also a problem with Claire Foy’s interpretation of the character.

To be blunt, Foy is miscast as Salander.

Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara both exude an “alien” quality and, when in full Salander costume & makeup, that quality is exaggerated further. Although both actresses appear to be relatively slight in build, they also possess a strong physical presence. The same can’t be said for Foy.

Instead of projecting an “alien” quality and look, Foy seems more like a wannabe Goth. She’s not an imposing physical presence nor does she convey the inner turmoil that either Rapace or Mara did when playing the character. She really comes across as a blank, which is surprising, given the Foy’s recent roles. Her portrayal of Sawyer Valentini in Steven Soderbergh’s UNSANE, released earlier in 2018, was excellent and it’s difficult to reconcile that performance with her version of Salander.

There’s definitely a problem with the character’s dialogue. Principally, the lack of it.

Salander has never been the most verbose of characters, but the script, credited to Steven Knight, Jay Basu & Director Fede Alvarez, takes the character’s limited verbal interaction to new levels. Characters say things to her and get nothing in return. Foy looks at them with no expression and, if they’re lucky, they get a monosyllabic response that provides limited information or, in some cases, nothing at all.

This is especially true of her scenes with Sverrir Gudnason, playing the latest version of investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist. The sexual tension that has been present in previous versions of the Salander Blomkvist relationship is absent in this film.

The choice of Director for this project is a large part of the problem...

Fede Alvarez garnered broad attention with his excellent 2016 Thriller DON’T BREATHE. Before that, back in 2013, he made his feature film debut with a new version of Sam Raimi’s Horror classic EVIL DEAD. THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB seems like a sideways step for the Uruguayan filmmaker, whose last film was an unexpected Box Office hit despite its graphic subject matter and atmospheric setting.

In some respects, THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB wants to be like DON’T BREATHE, but the film’s creative aspirations are curbed by the need for the film to reach the broadest possible audience. There is a fundamental mismatch between Alvarez’s style and the type of story that he and the writers have decided to tell. Alvarez and his regular Cinematographer Pedro Luque are forced to rely upon serving up amazing visuals but don’t have the story content to back it up. It really is a case of all form and minimal substance.

Film watchers familiar with DON’T BREATHE will recall that Alvarez does not shy away from gratuity. If it adds to the visual impact of the scene, he’s not afraid to show it. THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB is highly sanitised. Neither Alvarez or the MILLENNIUM mythology have been inclined to hold back in previous versions, but, in this film, neither the creative force or the script maximise the potential of the source material. It definitely feels like an effort has been made to reduce the violence and more extreme sexual elements of the franchise to broaden its commercial appeal.

So, is this a bad film?

No,, but it’s a very different offering compared to the previous Lisbeth Salander stories.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB introduces elements that pave the way for the story to morph into a political thriller where the reliance upon Salander’s exploits as a computer genius become the crutch upon which the viewer’s enjoyment of the film rests. By dialling down the more extreme parts of the character, the film becomes just another mainstream, commercial Thriller designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience. In making the film so broad, it robs the character of her identity, turning Lisbeth Salander into a middle-of-the-road Action heroine.

There’s also a underlying irony in changing Salander from an avenging vigilante to what she is in this new film…

The story shifts the focus onto Lakeith Stanfield’s Edwin Needham to become the driving force of the film’s plot. Needham is a multi-purpose character; computer genius, sleuth, military sniper… Whatever danger Salander finds herself in throughout the film’s second half, Needham is there to back her up. The film reaches a ridiculous point during the finale where Needham is picking off thugs one-by-one with a high powered rifle, connected to a computer that scans for thermal signatures while Salander stumbles around looking for a young boy who knows the password to an encrypted file that has the potential to start a nuclear war!

The Stieg Larsson MILLENNIUM trilogy was all about Salander taking control back; especially from powerful men who act as if they’re entitled to take whatever they want. The irony of THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB is that Salander regresses to becoming a victim during the film’s second half. Lisbeth is imprisoned and tortured by her otherwise thought-to-be dead sister Camilla, played by Sylvia Hoeks. Camilla has an axe to grind with Lisbeth and she uses their father’s criminal connections in her quest to destroy her sister.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB is a reasonable Action Thriller, but it’s executed in a manner that takes a very unique central character and turns her into something her creator never intended her to be. There’s plenty of room in cinema for female-led Action movies, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of one of the great female literary creations of the last two decades!