Movie Review The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower (2017) 

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel

Starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Jackie Earl Haley

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

To whomever said that Stephen King’s epic novel The Dark Tower was un-adaptable to the big screen, we owe you a Coke. The supremely silly movie sequel to King’s dense Dark Tower book series is an embarrassment to all involved from King to director Nicolaj Arcel to Academy Award winning star Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award nominated producer Ron Howard, who for some reason passed on directing The Dark Tower himself; golly, I can’t imagine why?

The work of the prolific Mr. King seems to resist adaptation in the same way a country might resist an invading army. Don’t misunderstand, some have managed to pull off the trick; Stanley Kubrick made The Shining, though Stephen King hated his adaptation; Frank Darabont did okay with The Green Mile but again, King hated that one as well and even The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t beloved by the creator even as audiences loved it. Of the 50 or so King properties made into television or feature films, only a handful have turned out watchable and The Dark Tower is not one of those movies.

Idris Elba is the star of The Dark Tower as Roland the Eld, a Gunslinger living on a Middle Earth where everything has been lost to some sort of apocalypse started by the evil Walter (Matthew McConaughey), a sorcerer(?) bent on destroying the Dark Tower which stands in the middle of a dozen or so galaxies and protects from the ultimate evil beyond the stars. Standing alongside Roland is teenager Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) whose visionary nightmares brought him to this middle earth, not the Lord of the Rings one, a Stephen King one, where he hopes to prevent the apocalypse on his version of Earth(?). (The movie is such a mess it's impossible to say whether Walter is a sorcerer or what Jake's motivations truly are, hence all the question marks.)

The Dark Tower was director by Nicolaj Arcel who seems entirely over-matched by this material. Arcel’s previous effort was the studious period piece A Royal Affair and it showed he could wrangle a sweet period piece romance but I am not sure what producer Ron Howard saw in that film that led them to believe Arcel could marshal the silliness of The Dark Tower into anything other than another abominable Stephen King adaptation.

Poor Matthew McConaughey takes it on the chin for the cast of The Dark Tower. While Taylor has youth as an excuse and while Elba can fall back on the cool Gunslinger persona, McConaughey is adrift as the ultimate evil, Walter. Sure, he’s also referred to as The Man in Black but even then, his costume includes a long coat with shoulder pads that make him look more 80s Dynasty diva than ultimate evil. Why they decided that the ultimate evil, worse than the Devil, Roland claims, should be called Walter is one of several bizarre decisions made by the creators of The Dark Tower. Sure, that could be something from King's book but even then, they could have written that part out of the movie considering how this is a follow-up to the books and not a straight adaptation.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) 

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev 

Written by Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel 

Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Ingvar Hirdwall 

Release Date October 9th, 2009 

Published October 9th, 2009

The character of Lisbeth Salander had, for a time, become the dominant pop cultural notion of an international ‘hacker.’ Or, at least she was until faceless Russian trolls became the top meme on that front during the 2016 election year. Before that though, leather, spikes and punk attitude, epitomized by Lisbeth as written by the late Stieg Larsson, was the dominant mode of our imagination of the hacker. 

That is because Larsson’s characterization of Lisbeth Salander as the ultimate, badass, rebel, outlaw of the internet was so incredibly juicy. Pansexual, androgynous, covered in leather and spikes with a photographic memory and an intuition to match. And, she can beat up just about any man put in her way? That’s a recipe for an irresistible pop culture heroine. Add to that, Noomi Rapace’s iconic Lisbeth in the 2009 film adaptation and it is no wonder that Larsson and Lisbeth have lived on long past the author himself and his Millennium franchise. 

With the latest, and the first under a new author, Millennium franchise story, The Girl in the Spider’s Web about to return Lisbeth Salander to our collective pop culture radar, now seemed like a good time to look back at the first big screen incarnation of the ultimate hacker icon, Noomi Rapace’s 2009 award winning performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces us to Lisbeth Salander as she is investigating a crusading journalist, Mikael Blomqvist (Mikael Nyqvist) who is being set up to go to jail. Blomqvist got suckered into a big investigative story about a powerful Swedish businessman but once he completed his story, he found that all of his sources had disappeared and he could go to jail on Sweden’s harsh libel laws. 

This, however, is not why Lisbeth is investigating Blomqvist. Instead, she is working for another billionaire businessman who wants to hire Blomqvist to investigate a 40 year old disappearance. Blomqvist specifically has a connection to the woman who disappeared, Harriet Vanger, as she was his childhood babysitter. Henrik Vanger, Harriet’s uncle, is betting that the personal connection and Mikael’s desperate situation will make him the ideal person to find evidence that no one has found in the past 40 years. 

Lisbeth’s part of the story should end there but she is deeply fascinated by Blomqvist. Investigating his case she found him to be the rare case of someone who has nothing to hide, a genuinely good man, caught up in a scheme not of his making. When Blomqvist accepts Vanger’s invitation to investigate Harriet’s disappearance, Lisbeth invites herself into the investigation and becomes Blomqvist’s partner and lover. 

The mystery at the heart of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo oozes with intrigue including incest among Swedish elite, billion dollar fortunes, a serial killer and secret Nazis. It’s a whole lot of story for a whole lot of movies, the film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, comes in at a fully packed 2 hours and 30 minutes. In that time, we also get to know some of Lisbeth’s frightful backstory as an abuse victim who has only begun to fight back. 

We learn a lot about Lisbeth’s resolve and strength in a violent subplot involving Lisbeth’s new guardian, played by Nils Bjurman. The film never explains why Lisbeth, who is clearly of an adult age, needs a guardian but the hint is that she is a recovering addict. Regardless, the brutal guardian exacts a toll on Lisbeth by taking over her finances and strangling the control she has over her life.

This subplot has received a great deal of controversial attention for having a brutal rape as its central conceit. Many have asked why this scene or even the subplot as a whole exists in the book and in the film. The answer is complicated, at least from my critical perspective. I can understand that the scene in question is brutal and could be fairly called exploitative. On the other hand, this subplot comes to play a larger role in the Millennium series as it goes on. 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo introduces this complex, traumatic and problematic subplot and it can be fairly seen as extraneous in the stubborn context of just this movie. In the Millennium franchise however, this subplot has a much larger part to play and comes to be if not a central component of any of the other stories, it’s one that communicates a great deal about Lisbeth, her history and how she copes. 

That director Niels Arden Oplev has done little since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2009 to distinguish his directorial career, does little to dim my opinion of the movie. This is one of the most riveting mysteries of this young century, a fascinating, twisty, and riveting work of suspense with an R-rated grit that makes it certainly not for everyone, especially those without a strong stomach. 

If you’re interested in the story of Lisbeth Salander ahead of the release, this weekend, of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, this 2009, Swedish language thriller, is the best possible introduction. Yes, even better than the American version of the story. That’s saying something as the 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo carries the distinguished reputation of director David Fincher. 

Nevertheless, consider 2009’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet’s Nest as required reading for true fans of Stieg Larsson’s dark, gritty and yet deeply commercial, mystery franchise, before or after you see The Girl in the Spider’s Web.