Álvarez, who also wrote the script with Jay Basu and Steven Knight, robs the main character Lisbeth Salander of her mystery, her pain. 

Salander, now played by actress Claire Foy, dons a mask that renders her anonymous. She is the harbinger of pain to disloyal men, the kind who would beat the crap out of a woman for displaying a lack of empathy to his anger. Nominally a computer hacker, Salander is a vigilante — unloved by her nation, cared for by none.

The thing is, Salander was a figure to behold in the hands of David Fincher’s American reboot, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or the first three Swedish Millennium films. 

From Noomi Rapace in the original to Fincher’s Rooney Mara, Salander’s inner thoughts are sometimes at odds with her actions. The multitudes she contains are simply too many to parse. It is because of this that her character, played by both actresses commandingly, is interesting.

Foy is a fine Salander, but hers feels robbed of an identity. 

The story concerns a score, in which Salander hacks into the National Security Agency (NSA) server for software that its creator, Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), wants back. That software could activate nuclear codes, if whoever has it isn’t wise with it, like the Americans. 

But wait: A Russian-Scandinavian criminal syndicate, who call themselves the Spiders, wants that software, too. Foy is a great actress, but her character is somber like the film’s pale color, with no modifiers attached to the adjective.

After having her warehouse blown up by the Spiders, Salander reconnects with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) for help. 

He accrues some sort of twisted thrill out of this rekindled partnership, but the actor who plays him isn’t even given a chance to whip up anything interesting for the character. 

He is just worried about things.

Anyway, Salander also needs to save Frans’ son, August (Christopher Convery), a math savant who holds the key to his father’s software.

She needs to save him from the leader of the syndicate, the mysterious lady Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks). 

Camilla and Lisbeth go way back. The twist, although wisely teased in the beginning, feels puerile in this movie. It is a cheap way for the audience to merely think that there is something interesting in Salander’s interiority. There certainly has been in Fincher’s film and in the books, but not here.

Part of that problem is the role that Salander has to assume this time around. 

She needs to be the Liam Neeson character in Taken, with no vengeance in mind. She gets in car-chases, hacks security systems, including an airport’s, with barely any hassle. Her phone and her computer are like a superhero’s mantel.

Spider’s Web also introduces Edwin Needham (LaKeith Stanfield), an NSA agent who sets out for Stockholm to look for the software (He wants it, too). What he does and what he ends up doing toward the film’s end don’t make for a good payoff — wasting a foil for or friend to Salander. The same can be said to Synnøve Macody Lund’s character Gabriella Grane of the Swedish Secret Service.

The catch is that The Girl in the Spider’s Web is an engrossing watch, just not a memorable one.

After I saw it, I saw some clips from Fincher’s film and the original Swedish films on YouTube. The sensation was different. Even when those clips are basically fragments, I feel like I get to know who Lisbeth Salander is and care about her.

________________________

The Girl in the Spider’s Web

(115 minutes; Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Regency Enterprises, Scott Rudin Productions, Yellow Bird, The Cantillon Company, Pascal Pictures)

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Vicky Krieps, Christopher Convery

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