In some respects there is little to comment on in this film except to say that is a competent rendering of the first volume of Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy involving Lisabeth Salander, violent and anti social but genius computer hacker. In a film top heavy with plot, heavy with dialogue with accompanying English subtitles, and with whole stretches of the film devoted to the two main characters hunting for clues through piles of old photographs and computer screens with very little action, the film is remarkably suspenseful for two and a half hours.
This is possibly helped by the screen writers cutting away a lot of the fat from the 500 page novel, and focussing mainly on that odd couple,Lisabeth Salander, and middle aged investigative journalist Michael Blomquist who join forces to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a 16 year old girl 40 years previously, inadvertedly stumbling across the work of an unknown serial killer in the process. In cutting the fat much of Michael's relation ship with the staff of his journal Millennium disappears, along with the politics, and he is no longer such a womaniser.
On the other hand,in characterising Lisabeth, much has been added. There is one lengthy sequence concerning the vicious revenge she takes on her sadistic former guardian that is largely irrelevant to the hunt for the serial killer,the main concern of the film. The graphic nature of this sequence comes from the book but readers of the novels will know that this is here to set up the story line of part two, along with an enigmatic flashback to Lisabeth's childhood. Lisabeth is an original creation, but the range of her off beat talents and ability to escape retribution, turn her into a Supergirl heroine, too larger than life to be truly believable.
The beautiful Swedish countryside still looks cold even when the sun is shining and is largely devoid of people apart from the characters relevant to the plot. Whether this economy of extras is deliberate or not, this further adds to the cold nature of the film,that is also mostly dour and humourless. Seemingly this film is a first instalment of a series made for Swedish television, and rumour has it that Hollywood has the rights to produce its own version, and is attempting to suppress the distribution of the Swedish sequels. Time will tell if this turns out to be true.