We – that’s myself, husband and Senior Son – went to see the English language version of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ last week – and we all agreed it was very good indeed, both as regards the lead and the minor performances. I was particuarly interested to see that plot and character all hung together well for Husband and Son who don’t know the books nor have seen the Swedish original. I was also relieved to see it hadn’t been overly’Hollywoodised’.

I’ve read and re-read the books and have seen the Swedish cinematic releases – though not as yet the extended versions/TV mini-series – and thought this adaptation was well done, making allowance for a couple of very trivial plot tweaks which I thought so trivial as to be unnecessary. Overall, I reckon this film is both sufficiently distinctive from the Swedish as well as sharing that version’s strengths to have been worth seeing in its own right – though granted, I probably wouldn’t have gone if Husband and Son hadn’t wanted to see it.

While Mara Rooney simply cannot match Noomi Rapace’s screen presence, she brought her own take on Lisbeth Salander to the role, reflecting the books in a slightly different but equally valid way. Just as Daniel Craig brought other aspects of Mikael Blomkvist to the fore, compared to Michael Nyqvist. In particular, I did find the theme of male bafflement and fear at being placed in the agonisingly vulnerable position of abused women had all the more impact when it’s the 007 actor who… no, no spoilers.

Talking of impact, I can’t decide if That Scene was slightly underplayed compared to the Swedish version – or if my reactions weren’t as heightened, since I knew what was coming. What I was very interested to see was just what a shudder that all gave my 18 year old son – so much for endless computer games desensitising the youth of today to violence. No, not in this case – he’s well able to distinguish between pixellated fantasy and cinematic representation of reality.

I would also be very interested to know what he made of the 18-cert straight-forward, grown-up sex depicted, as opposed to 15-cert naked-limbs-montage-occasional-flash-of-tit cinema. But since that’s a conversation I can’t see either of us being comfortable having, I will just have to wonder …

Anyway, both Husband and Son are keen to see the next two books filmed asap – and Son has collared my copies of the books to add to his TBR pile.

As to whether a remake is necessary, and whether or not viewers should just get over subtitles, I can see that argument. Then again, I can see the likes of my husband, who really hates watching subtitled films. Having to concentrate on reading text means he feels he’s not actually watching the film – and he is a very strongly visually oriented person, so that really, badly, limits his enjoyment.

Since he’s of the generation that either did maths/science or languages/humanities at school with no overlap – and he did maths/science, he has no foreign language skills at all to help him out. Whereas, having done Latin, Greek, French & German, I can get the gist of an awful lot of languages I don’t actually speak by listening closely and just glancing at the subtitles. Apart from Danish for some reason – I *cannot* get my ‘ear’ tuned right for The Killing at all – and for the first time, I actually get an idea of what he means!