The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Latest ‘Millennium’ movie is messy, kinda silly
Foy makes a fine Lisbeth Salander, but latest ‘Millennium’ movie is messy, kinda silly
Claire Foy is the latest actress to take the role of Lisbeth Salander — the hacker who punishes men who abuse women.
If you know actress Claire Foy solely from streaming “The Crown” on Netflix, in which she gracefully portrays a young Queen Elizabeth II, her physical appearance in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” will be jarring ¶ Short hair. Piercings. Large tattoo of a dragon on her back. ¶ Foy is the latest actress to take on the role of Lisbeth Salander — the hacker and vigilante who punishes men who abuse women and who serves as the heroine of author Stieg Larsson’s popular “Millennium” trilogy. ¶ Unfortunately, Foy’s compelling performance is by far the best reason to see “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” an action thriller that starts off promisingly enough but increasingly becomes a cartoonish endeavor from “Don’t Breathe” director Fede Alvarez.
Perhaps that largely is due to the fact this film is not adapted from a book by Larsson, who died in 2004, but from the best-selling 2015 novel of the same name by David Lagercrantz, contracted to continue the saga of Lisbeth. A little history: Swedish author Larsson’s three posthumously published “Millennium” books, the titles of which in English are “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2005), “The Girl Who Played With Fire” (2006) and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” were made into Swedish-language films of the same names, all released in 2009. An American-produced version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” — directed by David Fincher (“Fight Club,” “The Social Network”) and starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, as Lisbeth and her journalist ally, Mikael Blomkvist, respectively — hit theaters in 2011 and was generally well-received.
An American adaptation of “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” with Fincher, Mara and Craig onboard, was planned but never materialized.
Now, the film version of “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is said to be a sequel to 2011’s “Tattoo,” but there seems to be no mention of this in the film’s production notes.
And while, like all the aforementioned films, this one is dark and violent, it doesn’t have the artful bleakness that Fincher provided. In fact, “Spider’s Web” at times feels as much like a James Bond or “Mission: Impossible” flick as it does something that belongs in the world created by Larsson, Lisbeth using her smarts and tech skills to get out of jam after evermore-ridiculous jam.
The film begins with a flashback, to when she and her sister, Camilla, were young girls living with an abusive father, a life Lisbeth, unlike Camilla, chose to escape.
In present day, adult Lisbeth pays a visit to a powerful CEO type who’s been abusing prostitutes and sleeping with the wife of the wealthy man who backs his company. After Lisbeth roughs up the creep, transfers some of his money into the account of the hooker he’s just beaten and threatens to send an incriminating video recording to people who may just like to see it, he asks, “Who ARE you?”
“You should ask yourself that question,” she responds.
Soon after, she is contracted by a scientist (Stephen Merchant of “Logan”), whose potentially Earthdestroying work has fallen into the hands of the Americans.
He wants it back, but another, possibly more nefarious, entity craves it, as well.
Lisbeth is attacked by masked men in her techedout apartment, which they torch while trying to kill her. She escapes, of course, and seeks the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (now played by Sverrir Gudnason of “Borg vs. McEnroe”).
While Lisbeth soon finds herself paired with August (Christopher Convery), a smart, young boy she can’t allow the bad guys to have, Mikael works on determining who exactly is pulling all these strings — an endeavor that could end with another high-profile magazine piece for him.
One of the few other faces in the cast who will be recognizable to U.S. audiences is that of Lakeith Stanfield (“Get Out,” “Sorry to Bother You”), who portrays a specialist with the U.S. National Security Agency who also is in pursuit of the scientist’s work and who soon finds himself on the trail of Lisbeth.
Fortunately for her, Lisbeth is always at least one step ahead of everyone.
Early on in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” Alvarez shows a nice flair for visuals and he constructs some exciting sequences.
However, while his constantly moving camera accentuates the film when it’s gliding, it detracts from it when it’s shaking madly, as it does from time to time.
The real problem with the film, though, is its script, credited to Jay Basu, Alvarez and Steven Knight. The story becomes convoluted rather quickly and by the end is fairly silly. There are some nice ideas here, possibly attributable to Lagercrantz, but they don’t add up to a satisfying whole.
Nonetheless, Foy is a joy to watch. She already has appeared in 2018 films “Unsane,” a well-received psychological horror movie from director Steven Soderbergh, and the recent “First Man.”
Her performance in the latter, as astronaut Neil Armstrong’s wife, is one of the strongest assets of the film by “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle.
In “The Girl With the Spider’s Web,” she really seems to be enjoying playing a character who’s a far cry from the queen of “The Crown.” Like Noomi Rapace, star of the Swedish series, and Mara, she is a fierce and worthy Lisbeth.
The production notes do state that the film’s studio, Columbia Pictures, retains the rights to all future books in the “Millennium” series and is developing an adaptation of Lagercrantz’s 2017 follow-up, “The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye.”
If that film makes it to production, here’s hoping Foy’s Lisbeth is around to take that eye.