The Girl in the Spider's Web

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was advertised as "the feel bad movie of Christmas." Maybe that's why it didn't set the world on fire in 2011. Only now has Columbia Pictures brought Stieg Larsson's antisocial computer genius Lisbeth Salander from hibernation. Their latest cinematic adventure skips past Dragon Tattoo's two immediate followups - The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - in favor of David Lagercrantz's continuation, The Girl in the Spider's Web.

Salander (Claire Foy) roams Stockholm as an avenger of battered women. She takes up computer jobs too and Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) has a job for her. He created Firefall, a program which accesses all the world's nuclear codes. He wants her to steal it to keep it out of the wrong hands. She hacks into the NSA to get it. Agent Needham (LaKeith Stanfield) spots the hack and tracks down Salander. Some shady goons find her first, take the program and blow up her warehouse apartment.

Salander survives the attack. She gets her hacker friend Plague (Cameron Britton) and journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnasson) to help her. The goons find Balder and Salander is forced to go on the run with his son, August (Christopher Convery).

Salander's long lost twin sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) is the criminal mastermind behind the plot. She and her gang, The Spiders, plot to use Firefall for evil. They need August's savant talents to help them unlock Firefall. Lisbeth has to confront her past to save the present.

Director Fede Alvarez's (Don't Breathe) aesthetic matches nicely with the first film. Pedro Luque's cinematography is dark and alluring; the vast snow is a spectacular sight. Editor Tatiana S. Riegel makes the action nice and concise. Roque Banos's eerie score works wonders for the nightmarish opening credits. It's a great investment for $43 million.

The screenplay by Alvarez, Jay Basu and Steven Knight is a mixed bag. Lisbeth's payback on a wife-beating businessman was perfectly executed. Lisbeth and Blomkvist's reunion was a nice moment. But a few details seem to allude to the last two novels which the film skipped over. Characters seem to know about Alexander Zalachenko (Mikael Persbrandt), Lisbeth's abusive father, when they didn't in the last film. Lisbeth considers Camilla a sociopath before she finds out she's a criminal mastermind?! The double and triple crossing amongst the bad guys was pretty convoluted. It felt longer than its 117 minutes, which is a half-hour shorter than Dragon Tattoo.

Foy makes for a memorable Lisbeth. She's a brutal character, though considerably softer than last time. She's clearly traumatized by her past but moves on. That's a heroine. Her supporting cast is a nice bunch. Hoeks as Camilla is a compelling villain. Gudnasson's Blomkvist was a likable guy. Stanfield as Needham was cool too. While Persbrandt as Zalachenko only appeared in the prologue, we didn't need much to tell what kind of man he is.

The Girl in the Spider's Web is a fine reintroduction to Lisbeth Salander. It might've helped had they adapted the previous two novels. It would've helped transition between Dragon Tattoo Lisbeth and this one. Its convoluted plot is confounding, but its action doesn't disappoint. There's enough good here for a quiet fall matinee. Don't worry. It's not the feel bad movie of the holiday season.