The Girl in the Spider’s Web

I was very disappointed in this movie.  I read the original book trilogy by Stieg Larsson and enjoyed the Swedish movies with Noomi Rapace immensely.  I even enjoyed David Lagercrantz’s reboot of the books, although they are not as gritty and intense as the original series.  So I am very perplexed by this movie.  It took some of the most intriguing parts of the book and threw them out the window.  The aspects of the story not in the book that were added are boring and bring nothing to the story beyond the conventional.  Claire Foy is the latest actress to play Lisbeth Salander. She does a decent job, but in the end her portrayal falls flat.  In a nutshell, Lisbeth is approached by Dr. Frans Balder (Stephan Merchant in a brief and ineffectual role), who wants her to hack into the NSA and steal a missile progam he created.  Frans has an autistic son, August, who in the book doesn’t speak and whose drawings contain a clue to a killer.  In the movie version, his son speaks and seems perfectly normal except for his almost savant facility with numbers.  Why change this interesting and compelling character and turn him into a normal kid?  Anyway, Lisbeth discovers her twisted sister, Camilla, who everyone had assumed was dead is, yes, you guessed it – alive.  It is Camilla who is out to steal the program, sell it and destroy her sister in the process.  Camilla’s character is never fully developed so you only begin to really understand why she hates her sister so much through some quick exposition.  The last chestnut is the addition of an American NSA agent, who comes to Lisbeth’s aid, and fortunately is also a sniper with access to a .50 caliber sniper rifle, supported by the incredible computer wizardry of Salander’s hacker friend from the series, Plague. Anyway, instead of watching this one, I would watch the American “Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” starring Rooney Mara or better still, the original Swedish version that starred Noomi Rapace.  Skip this one, you will be glad you did!