Tangled Web of cliches disappoints
The Girl in the Spider’s Web (R16, 117 mins) Directed by Fede Alvarez Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★1⁄2
It’s not often I think an Englishlanguage remake of a decent non-English film is better than the original. But I reckon David Fincher’s 2011 version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo raised the bar on the 2009 Swedish original in a couple of undeniable ways.
Firstly, Rooney Mara promptly turned in a rendition of Lisbeth Salander’s avenging angel of such bat-poo dementedness she made Noomi Rapace’s original look like your nana knitting a scarf by comparison. Also, Fincher is as terrific a visual and sonic engineer as Hollywood has right now.
So I didn’t walk into The Girl in the Spider’s Web biased against the idea of the American takeover of the franchise. But I did walk out two hours later muttering that maybe some things should just be left alone.
Spider’s Web is an adaptation of David Lagercrantz’s novel. Lagercrantz took up writing duties after the original trilogy’s author Stieg Larsson died in 2004. This is the first adaptation to be filmed in English first.
Director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) doesn’t exactly drop the ball, but neither does he do anything to distinguish this film from any generic action-thriller.
The backgrounds are a slurry of muted greys, the interiors are all improbably, but conveniently labyrinthine and the action and fight scenes swing from uninventive to utterly impossible, but never quite find that sweet spot at which we will suspend disbelief because we are having too much fun to care.
The plotting is absolute boilerplate thriller, complete with a computer-based McGuffin that must be recovered for the safety of the world. This is the sort of film in which people run into a burnt-out building and then immediately find exactly the charred-but-legible news clipping they needed to move on to the next plot point.
As Salander, Claire Foy is good, and does more than enough to suggest that given a sharper script and direction, she could have been extraordinary.
Foy is also hampered by a dull support cast. A newly invented American male colleague and saviour feels like a calculated insult to Larsson’s original invention, and the introduction of Salander’s sister is pure desperation by the writer.
The spikier, tougher and more disarming elements of Salander’s personality are scrubbed away. The film mostly whitewashes Salander’s sexuality and does nothing much to expand on her mythology. This simplified and mostly generic version of the character plays more like a decent stab at Batgirl.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web
steers a once often excellent series away from the grit of the original source material. I honestly believe The Girl and the Flogged Horse
would have been a more appropriate title.