Boasting a steely performance from Claire Foy, 'The Girl in the Spider’s Web' is well made and moderately entertaining even if its original edginess has been very much toned down for wider appeal.
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In less than a decade, we have had three Lisbeth Salander. The latest incarnation is steelily and committedly played by Claire Foy (‘The Crown’, ‘First Man’). When she was young, Salander made an escape from her sexually abusive father, leaving behind her sister. She grows up to become the Lisbeth Salander known to us and everyone as the “girl who hurts men who hurts women.”
In a stylishly-directed first sequence of the movie, we see Salander in action as she delivers her brand of merciless justice to a CEO who had brutally beaten his wife to pulp. It’s a great set-up and character introduction, but after that the movie seems to have forgotten that the main motivation behind Salander is feminist vengeance and we are thrown into a James Bond territory in which expert hacker Salander teams up with American NSA security expert Edwin Neeham (played by rapper-actor Lakeith Stanfield) and long-lost friend and journalist Mikael Blomkvist (now turned into a very much reduced and sidelined character) in order to prevent nuclear security codes from falling into the wrong hands.
As a straight-up crime action thriller, ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ competently delivers what is expected of the genre. There are well staged action and chase sequences that are thrilling to watch. But yet this is not supposed to be an ordinary crime action thriller. Director Fede Álvarez’s decision to sandpaper the edgier and darker tone of the original Stieg Larsson trilogy in order to appeal to a larger mass audience will surely alienate fans. But for those going into the theatres with no baggage and just want two hours of cyberspy action and entertainment, ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ will make do.
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