Reviews

Same writer, same saga, different director. And you notice that.

The second chapter of Larsson's trilogy is almost a single continuous story split into two parts (tome II and III), while the first episode is more stand-alone (and IMHO the best one, both on paper and celluloid).

Unfortunately, most of the thrilling elements of the first episode disappear: there's less drama, less time to develop characters (and some are missing), the narration is sometimes incomplete (mainly if you read the book).

A few examples: the initial episode with Lisbeth in holiday is completely skipped (only a very short cut-scene survives), Lisbeth financial help to improve her old tutor Palmgreen's health is missing (and you see Palmgreen two times: the first one with a very pronounced handicap, the second almost healthy, just a few days after...), how did Lisbeth find Bjurman's vacation home?, what about the moto-club?, why is Lisbeth remotely deactivating the apartment alarm and not Bloomqvist with the WASP-on-phone-keyboard trick?, etc. etc. etc.

When compared to the previous cinema transposition (and generally spoken to the original book), tons of details and information creating and enriching the Larsson's world have been removed, resulting into a flesh off sub-version movie adaptation of what originally was an interesting novel, now reduced into a mediocre detective film.

OK, something in this movie is good: it features a very good stage designing and actors are doing their job pretty well. That's all.

The plot (very flat, slow and tedious) tries to sell some religious symbols and concepts (crucifixions, agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi, Saint George and the dragon. etc.) with some science fiction recurrent topics. The setting is looking strictly like Alien I (for the closed environment space ship) and Alien III (for the space penitentiary concept and the bunch of baldy prisoners and prison crew). Computer graphics have been used for representing the evil thing inside prisoners, looking like a jellyfish (or again a first-stadium Alien). These animations have been used, reused and used again during the movie and look always the same, starting annoying the audience after a while. Characters' names sound ridiculous (Caesar, Moloch, Persephone, etc.) and look like a poor cultural-oriented try to mimic some classic elements from ancient comedies and poetry. With no success. There's no plot continuity between some scenes, mainly between the fore-last (sacrifice of Caesar) and the last one (with our hero jumping into the space to perform some kind of redemption of the hellish planet, like Jesus sacrificing himself to redeem humanity...). The last scene is also reusing some elements introduced in 2001 a Space Odyssey, like the Ligeti-like soundtrack and some psychedelic CG effects.

In conclusion: a poor film telling one more time the same story and using one more time the same clichés.

OK, Batman TDK is a good thriller, worthing maybe a 7 out of 10: but is simply not conceivable that it is ranked more than masterpieces like The Godfather and other wonderful pieces of art. Batman TDK is NOT a piece of art: is just entertainment. Good entertainment, even if the movie is a bit long, the plot confused and sometimes non-sense (what about the logic of the ending? Mobile-phone image scanning?),etc. etc. as other reviewers already commented. The Batman character voice is also pathetic with the forced laryngitis-like tone: do you want Batman to talk like a 140 kg wrestling player? Nah... Those things may perhaps have impact on kids but look ridiculous to any other (more mature) audience. Heath Ledger's performance is good, in my opinion the best thing in this movie. I liked his performance when the Joker is coming out from the hospital before the explosion, when he walked in a very strange psychotic-way, dressed like a nurse. Ahaha, I liked his mimic!

I put 1/10 on this movie knowing that it deserves probably a 7/10 to reduce this insane over-rating.