Adapted from the Millenium Trilogy by the noted Swedish author Stieg Larsson the first film “Män som hatar kvinnor” focuses on Mikael Blomkvist a middle-aged indicted journalist and a talented young female hacker named Lisbeth Salander who is the real main character of the story.
The Swedes have been coming out with some awesome films this year and last year, a memorable one being Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which has shot into the IMDB Top 250.
This film also caught my attention winning a lot of acclaim and of course, regardless of quality I’ll watch any film with a hacking theme.
It turns out that the hacking theme is secondary, this is actually a superb, complex and very well directed thriller focusing on in-depth character studies and exploring some of the darker sides of human nature. The title directly translated means “Men who hate women” so the subtext is about sadism towards women.
Very much a whodunit reminiscent of the Miss Marple movies from the 80’s (based on the Agatha Christie novels) but with a lot of modern twists.
It’s definitely not a film for kids it’s set in a cold, hard, uncomfortable reality where both of the main characters have their own serious problems.
The cinematography is superb and even though it’s 2.5 hours long it never drags and is never boring, the pace is just superb and it really takes you deep into the plot.
I’m personally very glad that’s it’s only the first of a trilogy and I can’t WAIT for the next two movies to come out. Noomi Rapaces is truly outstanding as Lisbeth Salander and I don’t think they could have cast the role any better.
It’s one of the best movies of 2009 for me, it’s a shame it won’t be seeing any commercial releases.
I give it a h4x the planet 9/10.
