Girls with tattoos. Whew.

So I've heard about girls with tattoos. I'm told some of them (the tattoos) are in places you can't see unless you really know someone. That's kind of the case with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That and a lot of angst and anger and killing. Of women. By men. Rapists and Nazis (usually both, actually), to be exact. Which is what men are, if they're not good men. But you knew that already.

This is one of those movies, like The Da Vinci Code, that's based on a thriller of massive pulp paperback proportions. This is also one of those stories in which, as with the Harry Potter series, the heroes get the kind of breaks and deals that make you shake your head and understand more completely why you're a boring old high school teacher, and they're not. Sure they have to pay for those breaks with the odd beating or public shaming, but when they need a break, it comes, even when nobody expected it, or could possibly figure out how it could possibly, remotely, fall into your lap. Like maybe you're a wizard and you can just camp out in a multi-level tent with a chaise lounge, or you're so damn interesting as a journalist that some genius, formerly psychotic, presently computer-hacker, killer girl with a photographic memory (and a pretty substantial tattoo that she lets you "see" a few times (but that's later on in the movie, and it too just falls onto, uh, into, uh, well it ends up on your, uh, lap ... a couple of times) hacks your code and then ends up helping you, in so many ways, crack the case you've been hired, by the richest guy in all of Sweden (of course) to solve. And what is that case? A missing 16 year old niece that was the "apple of his eye" (he actually says that ... in the movie).

Well of course they solve the case. Of course the Nazi brother has trained his blue-eyed (and blue-sweatered) Nazi son to do it, to his own daughter, and to a gallery (?) of other girls - who mean nothing to him, whose eyes he loves to watch as they understand they're going to die, who is so wildly inventive in his so rarely evil ways, that one wonders that if the author of the novel wasn't taken into custody for a year of observation, the murder count in Sweden might decrease. Did I mention that the villain was a Nazi? That his other brother was a Nazi? And the other one too? (But not the brother that hired the hero, who's just a bit surprised when the hero "digs up" via one search on the interwebs that all three of his brothers were Nazis.) By the way, did I mention that the bad guys were Nazis?

Yes. I think the writing (of the movie - I haven't read the novel, but I may give it a shot just to justify this rant - it's been a few years since I forced myself through The Da Vinci Code, so I might have regained control of my gag reflex) here is crap. Yes. I note that a male author "creates" a dark, distant, dangerous, competent, attractive, randomly horny female main character as his fantasy. Yes. I note that the author was a journalist, just as his male lead character is a journalist. Yes. I note that the best thing you can do for your career is to pursue the rich and corrupt bad guy, endure a framing by said bad guy, for that will bring you another offer from a rich guy who you, without reservation, will trust is not corrupt or bad, because he's got tons of cash to throw at you, if you can solve his problem. Yes. That means that the little guys are still running around doing what the rich guys want because, somehow, the rich guys can't do any damn thing on their own. And yes. I note that the bad guys were Nazis. Again.

Really! Who wants to think up these things ... and then write them down? Okay okay, you're saying, PK, you're a writer. You ought to understand these impulses. You ought to see the art in it. The endeavour to translate even the most difficult aspects of the human condition into story so that we may more fully understand ourselves and one another. Yeah. You're right. I am interested in that. But that's not what Mr. Larsson gives us. He gives us a villain that we hardly know, except by what he does. And we only know that he does the worst sorts of things and ... did I mention that he was a Nazi? Like his Dad? Wow. That is breathtakingly inventive insight into the central conundrum of the human condition. I can't tell you how many times I struggle, daily in fact, with these inner urges to ... I'll stop there.

Except for one thing. That girl with the tattoo? Whew!

The ride report

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