RAVE - Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

From the ridiculous (She's Out Of My League) to the sublime (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).

This is a combo movie and book review, seeing as I read the book on vacation and saw the movie on the flight back from that vacation.

It's rare to see a Swedish movie at all, let alone one this good. And before you wave Ingmar Bergman in my face, I mean "lately, it's been rare to see a Swedish movie this good".

First of all, the book AND the movie are terrific: interesting, exciting, absorbing, convoluted, and rewarding. However, a lot of the complexity is taken out of the movie, a couple of Blomkvist's romantic entanglements were dropped (poor man), and many of his Vanger family encounters too (lucky man). These don't necessarily detract from the movie, but when you're in that unusual situation of simultaneously enjoying book and film, it can, as Shakespeare used to say, discombobulate one.

The story's pace takes some getting into - it's not for those people like my brother Lawrence, who "hates books where they dodge around from character to character every other paragraph", but otherwise it's framstående [that's the word to use if you're ever in Stockholm and want to say "outstanding"].

For those of you that care, the film is sub-titled. Despite that, it'll be hard for the English language version, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, to beat this original.

I can't find fault with either medium, and look forward to reading and seeing the rest of the trilogy.

BTW - the Dragon Tattoo itself is a minor detail, rather than an integral part of the story .. this is no Dan Brown novel.