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[Vince]

Anyone here seen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I mean the Swedish one.

Yesterday I watched the Swedish original Män som hatar kvinnor (2009) and it's a great crime thriller from director Niels Arden Oplev based on the first of three novels known as the Millenium Series by Stieg Larsson. Just beautiful cinematography and acting and the whole film unfolded keeping me trying to work out this mystery along with the characters. The film feels like a much higher budget production. I mean, it's really good, it kept me engaged throughout, and the characters are deep and interesting.

After finishing the film I was so impressed I went straight on to watch the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, or I should say Flickan som lekte med elden (2009). This second part of the trilogy is taken over by a new director (Daniel Alfredson), and new screenwriters etc. The film was shocking. Not only was it filmed seemingly amateurishly (a lot of shots were static tripod shots, poor camera movement, some of them pointless feeling), but they were also mostly grainy! Now I don't mind grain in films- 300 (2006) on Bluray is like watching sand move about, but it's justifiable; it suits the film. Though the Millennium Series is grungy, the grain in this film is clearly due to poor camera work.

A lot of the film is not colour graded at all, the scoring and editing isn't top notch and The film has some good parts- it gives us more parts of the story interlinking with the first one, and there's a lesbian sex scene, but I can't say I enjoyed the film very much overall. The characters have lost their depth, they become uninteresting to the point where we don't even care about them now. Even the acting is worse than in the first, and it's the same actors... it just goes to show how important the director is.

There's a shocking fight scene, it feels like a cheap TV production. This is what happens when you employ fighters to act, instead of training actors to fight...

http://youtu.be/8RMBFtbecrw?t=3m49s

Granted, it's harder to make a second part than a first part- we already have been introduced to the characters, and maybe the second book just isn't as good as the first. Still, it's a shocking film and I'm thoroughly disappointed! I'm not sure why I'm making this thread... I just felt the need to complain. I'm going to watch the third in the trilogy now, even though it's also by director Daniel Alfredson, maybe he can make it up to me. Next I'll be watching the American remake but I don't have high hopes for that either.