I have heard that Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of the bestselling Swedish novels of all time. The film it was adapted into is the top-grossing movie from that country -- ever. And I do not understand what all the fuss is about. It's impossible to draw conclusions about a movie's source material based on the film made from it, but in all honesty The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo barely qualifies as a movie at all. It's more of a compressed miniseries vomited onto the big screen, an experience that feels like it has had some critical information cut out of it rather haphazardly. The story is, to be kind, on the absurd side: Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist) has just been convicted of libel and forced to resign from his magazine in shame (in Sweden this means jail time), but before he reports to prison, he is hired to investigate the largely forgotten disappearance of a wealthy industrialist's niece. Because when your niece has been missing for 40 years, you turn to a convicted libeler to find her. Meanwhile, the angry and bisexual Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the tattooed girl of the title, is investigating Michael, and the two end up -- via wild plot machinations -- teaming up to track down the missing niece. Lisbeth has her own problems, not the least of which is a violent streak a mile wide. What a pair they make. What follows includes Nazis, incest, vengeance, dungeons, and an abrupt trip to Australia -- all while forces unknown take (rather pathetic) efforts to halt Michael's investigation. After 2 1/2 bewildering hours, the mystery is solved, but we're really left to our own devices to put all the pieces together. I'd say The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like The Da Vinci Code without all the religious stuff, but it's got that in there, too. In spades, really. While that part of the film ultimately has nothing to do with the disappearance in question (it involves some other missing girls who may or may not be related to the vanished niece), it's actually one of the few interesting parts of the movie. The rest of the investigation -- which, seriously, is heavily based on the completion of Google searches -- is haphazard and dull. The baffling script aside, there's little to be said about the rest of the production. I was shocked to find it was shot on 35mm film. It frankly looks like it was shot with a cheap digital video camera. The acting is cold and distant, particularly Blomkvist, who looks actually lost during much of the movie. Rapace's Lisbeth is more interesting, but she ultimately feels like a stereotype, despite her character's vaunted "complications." Still, it just goes to show that Hollywood will never let creative problems get in the way of a blockbuster property. An English-language version is already in the works. Perhaps it will be more worthwhile than this rendition. Aka Män som hatar kvinnor.