Me and Maya saw a screening of this adaptation of Stieg Laarson's novel, and we argued about what theatrical rating it would receive. Because there are some vicious rape scenes. They were long and violent and actually went both ways, men on women and women on men. There are also Nazis and serial killers. There are even Nazi, rapist, serial killers. This is not a complex morality play or character study. What it is, is straighforward noir shit where you hate, I mean fucking hate, the bad guys and love when they get theirs. I mean this in the best way. This is a good movie. It's 150 minute running-time feels like half that.
Disgraced reporter Mikael Blomkvist gets hired by a millionaire to solve the 40-year murder of his niece. The suspects: the millionaire's extended family (the crime took place during a family reunion of sorts). Mikael gets nowhere until an expert computer hacker and fan named Lisbeth Salander starts emailing him clues. Together they start putting the pieces together and discover that the murder might be just a small piece in a bigger web of crime.
The Scandanavians have been dominating the mystery genre for the last few years now and this movie shows some of the reasons why. The isolated, wintry settings seem the perfect fit, metaphorically and dramatically, for noir-violence. Plus, as New Yorker critic Anthony Lane explains, the Swedish writers (Lane also cites Henning Mankell) especially tend to depict the extreme crime as a symptom of a sytemic sickness (like how Chinatown did it, but local not national). So there's this dread that seems to underly all the institutions, from the cops to big business. This time of ill world is a staple and is worked well by these Scandanavians who seem to have some issues.
If you like an engaging story and like the cheap catharsis that comes with rapists getting revenge-violated up their poopers (and who doesn't?), then def check this out.
Women on men rape? This I gotta see!