WFH: The Girl in the Spider's Web

 2018, Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) -- Amazon

Lisbeth Salander was not positioned as the main character of the movie adaptation(s) of the Stieg Larsson novels, but she emerged as the most memorable one. Starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, she was played by Noomi Rapace, which cemented Rapace's place in Hollywood despite these not being American flicks. In 2011, David Fincher made a very American version of Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. The movie was visually stunning, as all Fincher's are, but to be honest, I remember nothing of it. And I think that lack of memorability is what made this one just come and go without much notice. Mara was replaced by Claire Foy who surprisingly was able to make me forget she was Queen Elizabeth in The Crown. Craig was replaced by Sverrir Gudnason, but maybe I shouldn't be using that term, as this is not meant to be a sequel to the Fincher, just another adaptation of another Larsson novel, despite how Hollywood spun it. This is Salander's movie through and through.

I watched this at the end of Spring, when the cold winds of winter were a recent memory. Swedish movies, like many from that part of the world being marketed to Americans, are shot in winter. The cold visuals of Stockholm are ever present, the wind blowing snow across the landscape. Salander is hired by Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant, Logan) to steal back software he wrote for the NSA, software that can take control of nuclear arsenals, anywhere everywhere. LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out) is transparently bland, as the American agent who runs off to Sweden to steal the software back from Lisbeth. But she becomes the fly when it is revealed that her sister (unrecognizable Sylvia Hoeks, Bladerunner 2049), assumed long dead at the hands of their gangster / psychopath father, emerges as the new head of their father's organization the Spiders, and is responsible for the theft, and has dire plans for it. 

The movie flits between chunks of Salander's trauma, her adept nature with technology and people (the movie assumes we are aware of her role as the punisher of men who hard women) with a tense sensibility, and a spy thriller structure. All the men in the movie play a supporting role to Salander's lead, even when she is carried away by an international conspiracy that threatens to overwhelm her. Noticeably was the choice to make Blomkvist an almost background role, reminding us of their complicated relationship but highlighting how lost his fame is without her. And just when he is almost ready to resurrect his name via another story about Lisbeth, he deletes everything, and let's her real story, the tragedy of her sister and her, and their evil father, just lie.

Despite Foy disappearing into the role, much more than I thought Mara did, I didn't find this much more than a passable movie. It was a good choice for WFH lunch hours, and 5pm step-aways. I liked the visuals, and Hoeks was incredibly creepy, all in red with bleached brows, and deadly as any black widow out there. Unfortunately, I believe this movie has milked what worth they can get out of the Millennium series.