Millenium - Men Who Hate Women

That's easier to understand than the original title : "Män som hatar kvinnor"

Except if you are perfectly fluent in Swedish.

Last night was another movie night ... probably the first time ever I saw a Swedish movie.

The Story

Millenium (let's go with a shorter version of the title) is based on Stieg Larsson's popular novel (this is the first part of a trilogy).

Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist who was just convicted of slander. Henrik Vanger, who used to be at the head of a large industrial company run by the Vanger family, contracts Blomkvist to search an old family case. Harriet Vanger, niece of Henrik Vanger, disappeared 40 years earlier at the age of 16. Police closed the case but didn't solve it and it remained a mystery haunting Vanger. And Vanger sees in Blomkvist the only man able to find what can be found in this story.

In his investigation, Mikael Blomkvist meets Lisbeth Salander, a troubled young woman who seems to carry an heavy past. But Lisbeth also has an incredible ability to investigate (using, among others, her computer hacking skills) and find clues that no one saw before.

Investigating together, they will soon find a very dark story behind Harriet Vanger's one.

The Actors

Unless you are very familiar with Scandinavian actors and actresses, you won't know any of them. I didn't know any of them.

So, I will focus only on the 2 main characters : Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth Salander.

I think the whole casting was good and did a good job here. However, Noomi Rapace gives a better performance than any other. She totally IS Lisbeth Salander and I honestly cannot think of a known name that would better fit in this role. She, only by her own performance, gives a good reason to see the movie.

What did I think ?

I didn't read the novel (but will definitively do) so I can't tell if it is well adapted or not, it's not the point.

What I can say is this movie is most probably one of the best thriller I've seen lately. The story is very well built, it makes you want to know what happens next. Also, it didn't give you too much clue to guess how it will end. I hate when I see a movie where you can guess who the killer is after 15 minutes and, for the next 90 minutes, you just wonder why the main character didn't guess. I didn't have that feeling here. I guessed who "the bad one" really was only a few minutes before Blomkvist and Salander did. And there was still a surprise after that.

When I chose to see that movie I had a doubt about its length (2hrs30) ... usually, when a movie is more than 2hrs long, it's just too long (some directors really suck when it comes to cut in their movie). It was not the case here, I didn't feel like it was too long nor thinking "This scene was totally pointless, just cut it".

The novel is the first part of a trilogy and, at first, it was decided to make a movie out of this first part and, after that, a mini-serie for TV out of the 2 other novels (it was supposed to have 2 episodes for each of the 2 books). Now, as they see the results (and, I guess, the earnings ... it remains almost not an empty seat when I saw it), they talk about releasing the 2 other parts in movies too. I really hope they will do.