Film Review - The Girl in the Spider's Web (15)

Are you not Lisbeth Salander, the righter of wrongs?

Full disclosure here - I've not seen any of the original Girl films starring Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. Nor have I seen David Fincher's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with Rooney Mara in the role. I haven't even got much knowledge of the late Stieg Larsson's original novels - hell, every reviewer has a few blind-spots, okay? Point is, I can't write as a fan here. I'm only talking about the movie in context of itself. And in those terms at least, it works passably well.

Claire Foy straps on Lisbeth's boots in The Girl in the Spider's Web, a film adapted from David Lagercrantz's continuation of Larsson's stories. The tatted Goth antiheroine is working as a computer hacker for hire, while carrying out acts of nighttime vigilantism on abusive men. (It's good to have a stimulating hobby.) Through her day job she meets Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), a computer programmer who - Oppenheimer-style - has come to regret the weapons-related tech he created. He employs her to steal it back so that no government can put it to use, but Lisbeth's are not the only eyes on this potentially deadly prize. And the other party may have a link right back to a dark secret from her childhood.

Directed by Fede Alvarez this new Girl is a handsomely made and tightly plotted espionage thriller with action overtones. Its colour palette is blue-grey, emphasising both the grimmer aspects of human nature examined in the story and Sweden's chilly beauty. (Lisbeth's main antagonist stands out on the bleak and sweeping landscapes in primary red.) The deliberate pace builds - accompanied by a rich, electronically-spiked orchestral score - to its sufficiently nail-biting crescendo. And all plot points - Swedish governmental manoeuvring, a US National Security agent's snooping, the investigations of Lisbeth's old journalist friend Mikael Blomqvist (Sverrir Gudnason) - knit together by the end. It's a point seriously in the movie's favour, following the catastrophe that was last year's The Snowman; solid storytelling, never less than engaging.

Foy has a good old stab at the lead character too, immersing herself in a role far flung from Elizabeth II (Brit TV's royal phenomenon The Crown) or stoic astronaut's wife Janet Armstrong (First Man). This woman has range. Her physicality and demeanour are both transformed as she commits to the taciturn complexities of Salander, not least in an early sequence where she proves her vigilante credentials beyond all doubt. It's not ultimately as visceral a performance as say that of Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde - something betrayed in a few irritatingly choppy hand-to-hand combat sequences - but this is still an impressive transformation, helping sell the story's more outlandish aspects.

Still, as confessed, I'm not a Salander aficionado, which no doubt explains the more lukewarm reaction to the film by Larssen enthusiasts. This sleek film doesn't, they assure me, match up to the original Swedish-language trilogy, nor does it plumb those movies' pitch darkness, despite the underlying theme of abuse and its terrible consequences. This much I will question - the wisdom of creating all-new backstory for a well-established protagonist. It's always problematic tinkering with the continuity of a long-running franchise - just look at Jason Bourne. Or the new Fantastic Beasts. Don't mess too much with the earlier films' legacy, that seems to be the lesson.

Spider's Web is full of comfortably familiar spy tropes and political double-cross, while the attempts of Lisbeth and her nemesis to out-manoeuvre each other play like a deadly chess match. As to its worth in terms of the Larsson legacy, others must be the judge of that. For me it was a smart and well-executed ride, and a perfectly engrossing stand-alone adventure that didn't seem to compromise its enigmatic lead. Maybe I'll reevaluate once I've seen the originals... 

Gut Reaction: A sufficiently high level of enjoyment for me to think 'I'm really enjoying this'. Although some of the more twisted elements did chill me.

Where Are the Women?: Female protagonist and antagonist playing that scary game of metaphorical chess. Very 2018.

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. Whether or not this is classic Girl, it's a solid genre pic and a decent night out. And that's all I have to say.