cuteasfunk

Istanbul and the associated reviews are really interesting. Yes it is a bit cliché'd and yes some of the characters are one dimensional. Errol Flynn's acting is unique and there are clearly attempts to refer to film noir (even though this a colour film) and there is an attempt by the film studio to lay this film over the moral dilemma of Casablanca and throw in Nat King Cole and "when I fall in love" as a replacement for Dooley Wilson and Time Goes by. But let us not forget films cost a significant amount of money to make and studios are stupid and they feel that they have to piggy back the film's selling point with another film's Unique selling point...see Altman's The Player....if you need proof.

But actually the pull of this film's USP, namely the love interest's amnesia and Errol Flynn's affection for her are quite striking. The diamond smuggling sub plot works to a degree albeit the villains, as one reviewer says, are rather thinly drawn.

What I found interesting as well was 1950's view of women. There was no depth to the relationship between the lead characters just a suggestion of something deep and intense going on. However floating on a love boat in the Bosphorus was all that explained this "love". Also the potential life after the successful acquisition of the diamonds was hinted without any explanation...and the lead female's new life was ugly to the 21st century mind...a suggestion that she would look after Mr Fielding, (presumably cooking, looking nice and proving oral sex) and in return he would feed and clothe her and take her to places like Istanbul, was contrasted with Marge and her husband, where the husband dished out a black eye because Marge might have been tempted by a Frenchman who would have gone with her to see Hamlet in Turkish was almost risible.

But I stuck with this film to the end and enjoyed the mild threat and laughed at the cloak and dagger stuff........no it's not great but it is worth watching.

I have now seen both films but haven't read the books. It would be so easy to dismiss the US film with caustic comments about Hollywood redoing international films for the worse, but I think this is more complex than that.

The first film had flaws, maybe not of pace but of character development. This version does provide some exposition of the principles and their behaviour. But the Swedish film tells the plot better and more intensely. I remember the scenes revealing the murders elsewhere in Sweden, far better in the original rather than Fincher's which were almost impressionistic.

I liked the development of Lisbeth in the final scene. It is irrelevant whether it is accurate with the books because in context it is more reasonable that Lisbeth feels something for Mikael because he doesn't demand anything of her...and entirely plausible when she reacts by throwing the leather jacket away and driving off.

Fincher's film is more beautifully shot for sure. But was that worth the enormous budget and is that not the greater travesty, that the studios and the directors believe that we need sumptuous visual spectacle to follow an original disturbing story? I appreciate both visual presentation and challenging story line and plot development, but one very rarely gets it....because a true original yet disturbing story would not usually attract such a large budget.

Go see this film it's not perfect but if you are so dumb you can't watch sub titles then this film might just shake you out of your intellectual torpor

Great film...slight flaws but who cares.....there's more invention in this film than all the other films released in 2009 put together (just about)....

One reviewer here said you can almost imagine it happening here....doh!....what do you think happens when you take a population that is not indigenous and place it next to another population....the one ghetto-ises the other and blames all the ills of its own society on it... also the indigenous populations seek to exploit it...both at the bottom end (nigerian black market - non PC but absolutely scary....it could be Albanians or any other population that we wrongly have nightmares about).....and at the other end...corporate greed.......

I do hope that this film does not become part of a franchise and I do hope the director has other films in him....whilst some of the cgi was used in car commercials and I don't know which came first...the story and the story telling is brilliant...so he should be giving us something new in a couple of years.....