The Girl In The Spider's Web

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Fede Álvarez.

Cast: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Christopher Convery, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Vicky Krieps, Claes Bang, Synnøve Macody Lund, Cameron Britton.

"Yeah, but at least I killed the spider."

The film versions of the Millennium books have been hit and miss. The Swedish film trilogy, which made a star out of Noomi Rapace, started brilliantly with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but the second and third films were disappointments.

David Fincher's Dragon Tattoo was also excellent, but this American "soft-reboot" follows the downward trend of the Swedish films. There are new actors and a new director on board, and even a new author (Stieg Larsson's passing in 2004 didn't stop his publishers from continuing the series with writer David Lagercrantz in his place), but the results feel old and tired, despite the fresh start.

The film opens with hacker Lisbeth Salander (Foy) continuing her passion for seeking vengeance on men who hurt women. But in between her missions of retribution, she takes on a job from a remorseful programmer (Merchant), who implores her to steal a cyberweapon he has created for the US Government.

Her subsequent theft of the weapon - dubbed Firewall - puts her in the crosshairs of numerous government agencies, as well as someone from her own dark past.

NOTE: This trailer contains some pretty major spoilers.

Foy's Salander is a good one, certainly on par with Rapace's and Rooney Mara's, but she's stuck in a film that is sadly lacking heart and soul. It's stylish, but it's missing something beneath that. Some deeper thematic layers would have helped, as well as some emotion.

Salander is such a distant person that it's understandable the film comes off as cold. But where her connection with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Gudnason) and her own failings and frailties helped melt the ice in Dragon Tattoo, there is no such thawing here. A lack of connection puts the entire film emotionally out of reach; so much so that by the end you won't really care who lives or dies.

As mentioned, Spider's Web is stylish, but often at the expense of reason - the film too often goes for "what looks good" over "what makes sense". Salander's apartment is a good example of this, as are some key moments in the first half.

This lack of a grounding in reality shines through in Salander's hacking powers, which border on the supernatural, to the point of being ridiculous. While admittedly cool in places - what she can do to someone else's car with her phone is pretty rad - it moves the story further and further from the reality of the world it's set in.

It all boils down to style over substance. Throw in a so-so supporting cast, and it leaves you with little to recommend beyond a couple of cool moments and another great performance from Foy in her breakout year.