10s Movie Review - The Girl in the Spider's Web

Director: Fede Alvarez
Genre: Drama/ Thriller/ Crime
Runtime: 115 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant

Description: Young computer hacket Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) and journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) find themselves caught in a web of spies, cybercriminals and corrupt government officials.

Review: A new introduction to Lisbeth Salander, it takes some time to get used to. The main character from the popular “Millennium” book series by Stieg Larsson and David Lagercrantz is blown up to almost mythical proportions in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web”. Standing in front of a big screen she seems like an avenging angel. Her face covered up partially by her hoodie, nonchalant lighting a cigarette. Her mission: punish men who (sexually) abuse women. She even added some white makeup around her eyes, like some sort of superhero mask.
The title seems to refer to the network of predators (pedophiles, rapist, abusers), but “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” hardly deals with this theme. The film is based on the fourth book in the series, which wasn’t written by author Stieg Larsson, but by journalist David Lagercrantz. And to be honest, it’s noticeable that the material has gone from Larsson to another writer. Especially when we’re looking at Lisbeth Salander, she is further from the character’s origin.
The ‘spiders’ appear to be leaders of a crime syndicate. The do everything to get codes from an online nuclear weapons program, byt masterfull hacker Lisbeth is trying to stop them. In this film she sometimes even feels like a female James Bond.
This cyberthriller has lots of bizarre twists, but has a high tempo and is well shot. And director Fede Alvarez manages to create some stylish scenes. Most attention goes to Lisbeth, and not to Mikael Blomkvist. His character is not very prominent in this film and sometimes even feels like he didn’t need to be there. When Stieg Larsson wrote the first books, they centered around Lisbeth and Blomkvist and their relationship. Claire Foy had big shoes to fill. Noomi Rapace portrayed Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish trilogy and Rooney Mara played her in the American version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Foy does a good job, but not as good as her predecessors. We can see Foy is a very versatile actress, since she also plays the role of Queen Elizabeth in series “The Crown”.
It's a given that the original series from Sweden is the best and I don’t think that will even change. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is a good effort, but since the books have been written by someone other then Stieg Larsson and it already feels different, the movie suffers from that too.

Rating: 3 / 5