If you think of Scandinavians as well-behaved, law-abiding introverts, you must have missed Stieg Larsson's grisly crime novels.
The late Swedish author's Millennium Trilogy is a multi-million-selling international publishing phenomenon. The series features an odd couple of heroes, rumpled investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and badass goth computer hacker Lisbeth Salander amid a witches' brew of hate crimes, neo-Nazis, corporate corruption, fundamentalist religious savagery, high-tech detective work and bone-cracking action.
The first film in a tryptich of adaptations, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," has the pair sleuthing the coldest of cases. A dying tycoon hires Blomkvist to dig into the disappearance of his daughter 40 years earlier; a number of people would rather see the reporter jailed on phony charges or outright dead.
The film been a smash in Europe, largely thanks to Noomi Rapace's surly, super-sexy performance as the heavily inked bisexual Lisbath. The film arrives locally Friday, March 19at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis.
I'll save my review for opening day, but I can't improve on this synopsis from Britain's Guardian newspaper: "It is a forensic procedural with explicit violence, sex, sexual violence (and) violent sex." Think CSI meets S&M.
Given the Millenium series' Harry Potter-like fan base, devotees may want a sneak peak. There's a special preview 10 a.m. Saturday, March 13 at the Edina Cinema, 3911 West 50th St. It's showing as part of the ongoing Talk Cinema film series, which showcases select independent and foreign films before they're theatrically released. The screenings are followed by audience discussions led by film scholars, experts and filmmakers. Admission is $18; $10 for students with ID. In subtitled Swedish; unrated by the MPAA, 152 minutes. For further information, visit http://www.talkcinema.com/.
