THE GIRL IN THE SPIDERS WEB
Production companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, New Regency Pictures,
Pascal Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions, Sony Pictures Entertainment,
The Cantillon Company, Yellow Bird
Cast: Claire Foy, Sylvia Hoeks, Lakeith Stanfield, Sverrir Gudnason, Vicky Krieps, Stephen Merchant
Director: Fede Alvarez
Screenwriters: Jay Basu, Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight based on the novel by David Lagercrantz and characters by Stieg Larsson
Producers: Eli Bush, Elizabeth Cantillon, Berna Levin, Amy Pascal, Scott Rudin, Soren Staermose, Ole Sondberg
Executive producers: Bob Dohrmann, Anni Faurbye Fernandez, David Fincher, Line Winther Skyum Funch, Johannes Jensen, Arnon Milchan
Director of photography: Pedro Luque
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Costume designer: Carlos Rosario
Editor: Tatiana S. Riegel
Music: Roque Banos
Casting director: Carmen Cuba
Venue: Rome Film Festival (official section)
Cast: Claire Foy, Sylvia Hoeks, Lakeith Stanfield, Sverrir Gudnason, Vicky Krieps, Stephen Merchant
Director: Fede Alvarez
Screenwriters: Jay Basu, Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight based on the novel by David Lagercrantz and characters by Stieg Larsson
Producers: Eli Bush, Elizabeth Cantillon, Berna Levin, Amy Pascal, Scott Rudin, Soren Staermose, Ole Sondberg
Executive producers: Bob Dohrmann, Anni Faurbye Fernandez, David Fincher, Line Winther Skyum Funch, Johannes Jensen, Arnon Milchan
Director of photography: Pedro Luque
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Costume designer: Carlos Rosario
Editor: Tatiana S. Riegel
Music: Roque Banos
Casting director: Carmen Cuba
Venue: Rome Film Festival (official section)
The adventures of Lisbeth Salander, the intrepid punk-goth hacker made famous in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, continue in The Girl in the Spider's Web. The
filmmakers take a heroic, action-packed, high-tech approach that
empties out some of the originality of this unique female heroine, while
pointing the movie at a rather different kind of audience from the
first trio of Swedish movies and David Fincher’s 2011 remake The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It is based on the book by David Lagercrantz that continues the series after Larsson's death.
There is a new backstory for Lisbeth that soft-pedals the original
one of multiple rapes and abuse. Other disconcerting changes should test
the loyalty of the series’ fans, while perhaps picking up younger
audiences. She now sports much more advanced IT skills. She also has the
new superpower of accessing any computer in the world in two clicks,
not to mention driving motorbikes and Ferraris over ice and snow at Le
Mans speed and surviving certain-death situations. If you flash on an
angry, pierced, femme version of James Bond, you are into the spirit of
the piece directed by Fede Alvarez and starring Claire Foy (First Man, The Crown) in the lead role.
Perfunctory in its psychological realism and flagrantly lacking any
other kind, the screenplay by Alvarez, Jay Basu and Steven Knight is
certainly not the most satisfying version of Lisbeth. But it is edgy and
action-packed, and Alvarez’ direction keeps the tension high through a
slew of ever-more-improbable threats to Lisbeth and her allies. In the
end, her character is so invincible she feels unreal as a human
personality. For one thing, she has lost the traumatic background of
abuse that made her credible as an angry feminist revenger in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
It’s also perplexing to discover she has a sister (Sylvia Hoeks) whom
she left behind when she escaped from their father, a Russian crime
lord.
In the film’s dazzling opening flashback, two little girls — Lisbeth
and her sister Camilla — play chess together in an icy fortress. A
servant announces their father wants them in his bedroom, and one look
at his perverted face is enough to know what he wants them for. While
Camilla hangs back, little Lisbeth throws herself out of a high window
into a blizzard and, surviving the fall, runs for her life. She never
goes back while Dad is alive.
This is her new traumatic childhood, which is supposed to have turned
her into a vigilante famed for hurting men who hurt women, probably as
close to a #MeToo hashtag as an action-thriller can come. Her reputation
as a dangerous outlaw hacker gives her an underground cool, and in fact
she has been living incognito among Stockholm’s swinging nightcrawlers
while apparently wanted by the police for illegal hacking activities.
Her big wounded eyes belying a tough guy appearance, the athletic Foy
does quite a respectable job following in the footsteps of Rooney Mara
and, in the Swedish films, Noomi Rapace, though she doesn’t outpace
them. Her casual bisexuality is entirely in keeping with her modern
image: She has a number of female lovers but still has a tender spot for
Mikael Blomkvist, the unfaithful journalist who wrote and published her
story, causing her to disappear from his life. In a much-reduced and
unexciting part, Sverrir Gudnason is hardly more than a shadow in the
role that was Daniel Craig’s. Versatile Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread)
is more regrettably thrown away in a cameo as Mikael’s business partner
and lover. All the actors speak English with mild Swedish accents,
including Krieps and the British Foy, an affectation that keeps them in
their parts.
An early demonstration of Lisbeth’s steely resolve, as well as her
fighting skills, comes in the rescue of an abused wife from her big
businessman husband, who has just beaten her bloody and is making
excuses for himself. Lisbeth appears dressed as an avenging angel with
black wings; she quickly trusses the husband up in a lasso and hangs him
from the ceiling, a perfectly impossible operation from a realistic
p.o.v. Meanwhile, she empties his bank account in favor of his wife and
the two prostitutes he beat up. Her trademark weapon, an electric taser,
makes its first of many appearances as she stings him where it hurts
the most.
The story proper begins when she’s contacted by Frans Balder (Stephen
Merchant), a frightened American programmer who is in possession of
software capable of hacking into the world’s nuclear arsenals. He has
come to fear it’s not a good thing to leave unattended in the hands of
the U.S. government. Admittedly, the stakes are high, and for once
Lisbeth is stymied over a password. Though Balder doesn’t get far into
the story, he has communicated all the passwords to his savant
6-year-old son August, played by the delightfully serious Christopher
Convery. The boy’s presence in Sweden complicates things considerably
for Lisbeth, Mikael, the Swedish head of national security and the
film’s best new character, Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), a
legendary hacker turned NSA security techie, whose prowess scores some
points for the USA. Needham is challenged to keep out of it by his
Swedish counterpart but ignores her and plows ahead on a collision
course with Lisbeth and friends.
Fortunately, there’s not much gab in the conference room and the
hacking — involving anything from building surveillance cameras to
national weaponry — takes from two to three seconds of screen time to
accomplish. One does get tired of everybody locating everybody else
using the old trick of triangulation of phone calls.
Sweden’s wintry landscapes turn out to be the ideal background to
buildings bursting into blazing fireballs and motorcycle chases on ice.
Imaginative visuals keep coming when a colorful figure from Lisbeth’s
past unexpectedly appears and, surprise but no surprise, turns out to be
the Spider Master. This arch villain first gasses, then vacuum-packs
Lisbeth in a black plastic bag, which must be a first in the world of
screen punishment. However, their final confrontation takes place on
emotional terrain that is exactly the film’s weak point.
Lisbeth’s fans will be happy to know she still has the dragon on her
back, a bit the worse for wear after the ruthless Spiders turns her cool
secret digs in an abandoned warehouse into burnt toast. Cement
fortresses without windows are characteristic of Eve Stewart’s
production design, which pushes high tech ideas into the future with
conviction. Also notable is Pedro Luque’s icy cinematography, draining
color from scenes like blood from faces.
