Review: Lisbeth Salander goes awkwardly into action in The Girl of the Spider Web



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Many things have changed since the last time we saw Lisbeth Salander. On the one hand, it looks a lot more like Claire Foy that she was used to. (Remember when she looked like Noomi Rapace?) Beyond the surface, she also seems to have acquired new skills and tricks, turning her into a revenge-angel hacker. . . savior of humanity?

This is the jump made by The girl in the spiderweb, a sequel to 2011 The girl with dragon tattoo it reinforces the character created by the late Stieg Larsson – a daring pivot in the hope of revitalizing a franchise. It's a sharp turn. The creation of Larsson, Stockholmer Lisbeth with punk hair and pierced, is still an antisocial investigator hackers who travels the city with a powerful motorcycle by putting in place the bad guys. But she also has an apartment with a panic room, a safe outside the city and rifles. She has become something of a secret agent and Spider web inflates to accommodate the upgrade.

Except that it's really an update? Lisbeth loses some of her individuality when she becomes an actress, becoming a more generic drummer with simpler motives. The film is adapted from a book written by David Lagercrantz, which was chosen to continue the adventures of Lisbeth by the domain Larsson. This is the kind of corporate pastiche that is a superficial tribute to what worked in the original, then pulls it all off with bare embellishments.

Maybe Sony saw the black Scandi boom go down and thought it better to put Lisbeth in a new, more reliable genre. They hired the director Fede Álvarez do the job, perhaps impressed by his work in another genre, the horror. There is a little gothic creep in the second half of Spider web, which makes Lisbeth count with his past while seeking a MacGuffin that could lead to a nuclear war if he was in the wrong hands. (Yes, Lisbeth Salander now resists nuclear holocausts.) I would be in the first half of the equation if it were not confused and confused by it – or vice versa. Álvarez is blocked by the dueling impulses of history; the techno thriller and the twisted family drama are merged clumsily, so that each part is escaped.

Spider web is not a wrong movie, really. It simply goes beyond the results. Álvarez stages a few sequences that resonate, in particular a deadly fight in a bathroom that moves the film to the next beat in a stupid and gnarled way. The decisive clash between Lisbeth's main and mysterious film antagonist manages to give a glimpse of one or two real pathos, glimpsing a deeper and even darker film that could have been – if everyone involved did not want to turn Lisbeth into a superhuman Ethan Hunt / James Bond / Jason Bourne – guy.

This emotional scene succeeds largely because of Foy, who pinches his plumet accent here to make it scandalous and hardens his stone gaze. She is a captivating interpreter to look at, both confident and curious, a prodigious student who tests new things meticulously. Spider web tries to soften Lisbeth by placing it with a kid, as sharp as in the thriller genre of action. But Foy largely resists the sentimentality imposed on him; her Lisbeth is cute and opaque, even if she is forced to play chess with a little boy on the mop. (The less we say about performance, the better.)

Foy gets some fun support from Lakeith Stanfield as an American agent trying to track down a hacker who stole his nuclear code program. As in most people in this movie, he is more than he initially seems, turning from N.S.A. Office jockey to super-sniper with ease. I also love the model turned movie critic turned actress (so there is hope for me!) Synnøve Macody Lund, play a Swedish steel security officer in the tight mode of Sidse Babbett Knudsen. (It should have been in this movie too … Why not!) This is another great role that I will not tell you because it's a spoiler, so to speak, but it's played by Sylvia Hoeks-S & # 39; stop in Blade Runner 2049, do a little less impact here. Despite everything, she and Foy work together eagerly.

You will notice that I have not yet mentioned the apparent star of the other Girl stories, Mikael Blomkvist. Not because it's not in Spider web-It is – but because the character (played by Sverrir Gudnason) is such a non-entity. This humble journalist does not really fit into the new world of big issues of Lisbeth. And yet, he is still in the film, out of respect for a past in which I do not think anyone is really invested. None of these old traps needs anything for the franchise to really move in this new direction. The film, however, does not engage in this journey, half changing Lisbeth and leaving her torn between two worlds. I hate to see our daughter so stuck.

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