This is one of the select few movies I have seen and yet remember hardly anything of it.
A long time ago when I was but a 16 year old wee lad, my mom actually took me to see this in theaters, I had no definitive drive to see it but went with an open mind. Ohhh.....yikes. Yeah, that was an interesting sit and it's been over 10 long years and I remembered hardly anything besides the obvious horrific, disturbing, f***ed up shit that occurs in a few scenes. So I was walking in relatively blind once more and found a pretty solid mystery thriller. So our handsome sexy man Daniel Craig, plays investigative reporter Mikael who is called into service by a wealthy gentlemen, played by Christopher Plummer, to solve a 40 year old case of his missing presumed dead daughter and this is the strangest prequel to Knives Out I could imagine. Meanwhile as that story plays out we meet Lisbeth, played incredibly well by Rooney Mara, who goes through some serious shit of her own before she also is roped into this murder mystery, putting her advanced computer skills and logical thinking to the test to assist. What I like a great deal is, this could so super easily be seen as two seperate movies haphazardly daisy chained together but it never breaks immersion or intrigue, you know these two characters will meet at a certain point but it gives each of them time for the audience to understand them before the dynamic shifts into a duo. And Daniel and Rooney have fantastic chemistry, quite honestly getting a few laughs out of me because of how these two personalities work in tandem. Lisbeth is very analytical, anti-social, and clearly different from the pack while Mikael is more normal leading man material but is given his own problems and personality while keeping him an average journalist. He's no Sherlock, or Bond action man, but needless to say Daniel pulls it off expertly. The mystery gains intrigue very quickly, and it is a somewhat methodical some would say boring form of detective work, connecting the dots of this family who are held suspect in this girl's death and who knows who considering the family is very seperate and hardly talks to one another. Now on one hand I can see that being a problem, juggling many characters and names and trying to keep all the strands together in your head, but even with my more lax viewing of this and forgetting who some people were it didn't negatively affect me. I was keeping up with it but not by much, this isn't the movie that points and shouts a clue, a clue! It doesn't hold your hand but I feel the movie is more about keeping your intrigue and attention instead of making you a junior detective who's trying to solve it first. It's directed well and no doubt many people can get super into it and piece together the puzzle which is great for this kind of genre. The interesting thing is when it seems everything is wrapped up, the truth is found, case closed you think that would be the end all be all. But in actuality the movie goes on for some time afterward, I can see people checking their watch like come the hell on the movie is over, but it gives some closure to Mikael and his crisis at the beginning of the film, some would consider it last minute payoff to a relatively unimportant set up but I got really into it. It shows our leads do more stuff after the fact, and they gain a quantum of solace before the credits. I know, I went there, and not to go on a tangent but the ending did kinda give me Quantum vibes. I may not have focused much on the more shocking stuff, and it is effectively disturbing, and I still somewhat question how my mom felt with me sitting next to her during such parts, but they are more a disgusting seedy seasoning and not the main focus. I enjoyed it, was engaged, and knew it was gonna give me a fair bit to talk about. 4 stars, 8.5/10, next week is more likely than not gonna be a short week of reviews but it's dinosaurs so it can't be all bad.
