As an addon book (by a hired gun) after the original Dragon Tattoo trilogy was ended with author Stieg Larsson’s death, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” was a barely passable thriller. Now brought to the big screen, the movie is a kinetic, lush zinger. Claire Foy, unrecognizable as The Queen or Neil Armstrong’s wife (her very recent roles), mesmerises as troubled super-hacker Lisbeth Salander. Quite how she does it, I can’t explain, but somehow Foy transcends the Bond-ish lurid plot, to the extent that every scene with her at center stage is a winning scene. The other actors are also perfectly cast, if somewhat limited by the narrative. If I was occasionally troubled by the “full-on-thriller” styling, that mattered little, for the combination of propulsive plotting and staging with Foy’s virtuoso performance swept me up. 117 minutes vanished and I emerged from the cinema overwhelmed and, weirdly enough, reflective. Bring on the next one in this post-Larsson series, I say.
Book, album, and movie reviews
