The Girl in the Spider’s Web

Cert: 15A; Opens November 21

I’m a little torn about this latest incarnation of Lisbeth Salander. On the one hand it is great to have a female day-saving action hero — on the other it is a great pity to see one of the original examples of #MeToo reduced to a day-saving action hero.

The current Lisbeth (Claire Foy) avenges women who have been abused. But the plot is based around her hacking the US government to retrieve an important program at the behest of its creator (Stephen Merchant). But a lot of people want this program, the password to which can only be unlocked by the creator’s son. There are lots of chases and fights and things get blown up.

When we first knew her (played by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish films), Lisbeth was a complex character and the aftereffects of abuse were woven through and around her. In this version, by Fede Alvarez, I feel Foy is miscast — but the writing is where the real weakness lies. Lisbeth has been emotionally neutered, her sexuality, too, is mere tokenism, and she has been given more fire power in compensation. (The childhood sisters’ scene is plot mechanism rather than character set up.) Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) is a mere decoration, an American (Lakeith Stanfield) is required to save the day and the baddie Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) is straight out of the rent-avillain character school. As an action film it is fine, ridiculous but non-stop and well-paced. As a piece of writing, however, it is reductive of the source material, has some bonkers segues and all those interesting characters and dynamics have been either over simplified or crushed with cliche.

Fans of the franchise won’t be happy, newbies might be.