The Thousands

Yeah yeah, I’m one of those people who devoured Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of brutally violent blockbuster novels. They’re clunkily written but full of compelling moral outrage and twist-laden plots. This Swedish-made film is a faithful, satisfying screen adaptation, much as I’d imagined it – right down to its rivers of filter coffee.

Noomi Rapace nicely balances bravado and vulnerability as tomboyish Lisbeth Salander, whose tough carapace of tattoos, piercings, Matrix-inspired fashion and 1337 hacking skillz can’t quite compensate for the grievous wrongs she’s endured. She teams up with disgraced investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) to discover what befell Harriet Vanger, the missing niece of industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube). Nyqvist is a less dynamic choice as the shaggily charming, resourceful Blomkvist, but he gradually warms to the part, and I enjoyed his chemistry with Rapace.

At two-and-a-half hours, the film still strains to keep pace with the action-packed plot, at the expense of the book’s cynical atmosphere of corruption and misogyny. Some minor characters are gone before you’ve even placed them in the story. Technically, it never rises far above the level of "SBS Thursday-night police procedural", but it’s still an intriguing, elegantly shot thriller.