The Girl In The Spider’s Web
3 stars
Director: Fede Alvarez
Stars: Claire Foy, Beau Gadsdon, Sverrir Gudnason
Duration: 117 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd
She first made an impact on international readers in the best-selling Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, published between 2005 and 2007, subsequently published in English from 2008. Lisbeth Salander is a vigilante hero who heralded in the 21st century with a bang.
Dark of dress and even darker of demeanour, she is a loner; a brilliant cyber-hacker who uses her skills to investigate corporate crimes and individual felonies, bringing down the likes of business titans and rapists alike with her own version of justice.
The Swedish heroine made it to the big screen in 2009, in three superb Scandi-noir thrillers starting Noomi Rapace. A Hollywood franchise was launched with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2011, starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. However, the idea of the sequels was seemingly aborted.
Larsson died in 2004, so he never got to see the movie adaptations of his work. But, the journey of his character was continued by journalist David Lagerkrantz in two recent novels, starting with The Girl in the Spider’s Web in 2015, which was quickly snapped up for a cinematic adaptation.
This new adventure pits Lisbeth (in this incarnation British actress Claire Foy) against a mysterious cabal trying to get their hands on a unique piece of software that will give the user sole power over international defence nuclear systems. The creator of the software – eminent scientist Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) – is aware of the destruction his creation can cause and engages Lisbeth to get it back after he sold it to the American NSA.
Delivers all that is expected from a Lisbeth Salander adventure
Lisbeth is successful but, before long, it is stolen from her and she goes on the hunt to retrieve it with the NSA and the Swedish Secret Service hot on her trail.
Directed by Fede Álvarez, The Girl in the Spider’s Web delivers all that is expected from a Lisbeth Salander adventure and does it all with style – from its opening Bond-esque sequence to the cold, wintry tone that pervades throughout – physically embodied by the dazzling snowy landscape that forms the backdrop to the film. The action is energetic – whether the smaller scenes with Salander effecting efficient payback to a wife-beater to the bigger ‘money’ moments – car chases, gun fights, et al, with the destruction of her apartment being particularly effective.
That said, it may not fully capture the darkness of the original trilogy and, for the most part, feels like nothing more than a well-made espionage thriller, with its race-to-stop-nuclear-codes-getting-into-the-wrong-hands theme. Yet, it is driven by a committed performance by Foy, who confidently steps into the shoes of this most complex and charismatic of heroines.
Foy – who of course made her mark as Queen Elizabeth II in the TV smash hit The Crown, effortlessly sheds the finery of one iconic Elizabeth for the dour, dark togs of another, displaying her range as the titular Girl.
Foy imbues this impenetrable loner, who is seemingly incapable of emotions, with a touch of humanity that we have not really witnessed before. Not that she is softening, by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet, that she is in a way capable of acknowledging her feelings is evident as she battles the whirlwind of feelings that overcome her as she is very violently confronted with demons of her past.
It’s a nuanced performance, and Foy easily out-performs anyone else she shares the screen with. The character of Mikael Blomqvist (Sverrir Gudnason), the journalist she worked so closely (and on occasion intimately) with in the past is pretty much relegated to the background. That said, there are some truly powerful scenes between Lisbeth and her estranged sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) that add some genuine pathos to the story.
It may not be as slick or as dark as what has gone before, but Lisbeth remains such an intriguing character I for one can’t wait to see what the Girl will get up to next.