'The Girl in the Spider’s Web' Falls a Bit Short on Grit and Thoughtfulness

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is the fifth film of the Millennium franchise.  It serves as a loose sequel to the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as a reboot of the movie series.  Moreover, unlike the previous film adaptations which were based on the original Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, this film’s source material is the novel of the same name written by David Lagercrantz, who was commissioned by the publisher to continue the series after Larsson’s death.

The plot follows the asocial, goth hacker Lisbeth Salander (played this time around by Claire Foy, taking over the role that was previously Noomi Rapace’s and then Rooney Mara’s), who has been hired by a computer programmer named Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) to hack the NSA and retrieve a dangerous program that he made for them.  Fearing the tremendous threat it poses, he intends to destroy it once he gets it back.  Salander succeeds with the job, but it quickly puts her in the crosshairs of NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfeild), the Swedish Security Service, and a deadly crime syndicate with a connection to her past.  Requiring help, she turns to her former partner Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason), a talented investigator and a veteran journalist for Millennium magazine.

I extremely liked David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from the very first time I saw it.  But even though I became aware almost immediately afterward that it was based on a book, it took years later before I learned that there had already been Swedish film adaptations of the initial book trilogy (and the fact that Rooney Mara and Noomi Rapace both played Lisbeth Salander is probably the reason why I thought the two of them were the same person for a long time).  After seeing the original films, I thought they were superior to the Hollywood version.  However, I prefer either over The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

It’s just not as gritty and cerebral – characteristics that make the previous two incarnations more remarkable.  Now, it does have those.  It’s smart and has dark, unsettling elements.  But compared to its predecessors, it feels significantly toned-down.  A reason for that may be likely because it’s not based on a Larsson novel.   It may also be for the reason that it executes itself as more of an action thriller mystery, while the 2011 American film and the 2009 Swedish films were more of psychological thriller mysteries.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Girl in the Spider’s Web.  There’s a lot to like about it despite its lacks.  Even though it didn’t quite make its whole better than the sum of its parts, it definitely contains several cool sequences.  Plus, Claire Foy does a sufficiently compelling Lisbeth Salander.  It’s just that, the movie was still a couple of tweaks away from becoming truly noteworthy.