The Girl In The Spider's Web Review

The world-famous Swedish vigilante programmer Lisbeth Salander is back, and this time she's saving the world from atomic demolition. It's somewhat of a shift for Salander; when last we saw her in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," she was solving serial murders and exacting painful retribution on abusive male accountants. The girl in the spider's web directed by Fede Álvarez. 

The Girl in the Spider's Web starts with a flashback in which the youthful Lisbeth escapes from the sanctuary of her pervy father, a Russian wrongdoing ruler, leaving her sister Camilla to father's degenerate ways. Lisbeth truly has it in for male creeps. At an opportune time, we see her truss up a fella who has beaten his significant other and assaulted two hookers. A Taser comes in convenient, as does her skill in transferring the scumbag's funds to these female victims.

Lisbeth has never been a character that invites the group of spectators' warmth so much as their compassion. She has always kept other characters (and viewers) at a safe distance. In this installment Lisbeth finds herself looking out for an endangered tyke, a mission that doesn't exactly soften her so much as it forces her to fashion a bond with someone who isn't able to do or interested in hurting or exploiting her physically or inwardly. Protecting youthful August Balder (Christopher Convery) ties into the pain and blame Lisbeth feels for leaving her sister Camilla behind as a kid. What's more, as she also did in her Emmy-winning execution in The Crown, Foy excels at revealing her character's inner state with just a look or a touch of non-verbal communication, smart choices are given how monitored and of few words Lisbeth is. 

The best sequence in the film, however, happens all around at an opportune time and isn't an activity scene fundamentally yet rather a genuinely sensational one that captures the essence of who Lisbeth Salander is; it's a fierce masked vigilante encounter deserving of Batman or Daredevil where she captures and metes out correctional justice on an abusive, influential man. The Girl in the Spider's Web has essentially refashioned Lisbeth Salander into a superhero and this is her "I'm Batman" scene, yet the movie never fully recaptures the intensity of this introduction. 

In a smart gesture to David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Alvarez opens The Girl In The Spider's Web with nippy, precise framing and a shading palette that ranges from snow-white to burnished steel. As the film goes on, in any case, this desaturated tribute continuously bleeds into Alvarez's own signature style, which here means hand-held close-ups, bruise-like greens and rusty oranges, and skill for inventive weaponry. (Who else yet a repulsiveness chief would think to use latex fetish gear as a torment gadget?) But while Alvarez acquits himself with thrilling activity sequences and very fast pacing, the general impression left by this "New Dragon Tattoo Story" is one of a dangerously sharp edge dulled by the demands of franchise filmmaking. The movie merits 6+.