The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Lisbeth Salander - the Swedish cybergoth - is one of the more intriguing characters of recent airport fiction. A tough 24-year-old computer genius with a photographic memory and a body covered in tatts and piercings, she's the main drawcard in the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy of technological thrillers that has sold more than 21 million copies in various translations. As portrayed by the inscrutable Noomi Rapace, Salander is also the best reason to keep watching the film adaptation of the first novel, in which she meets her mentor/offsider, crusading investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist (As It Is in Heaven's Michael Nyqvist).

The film and book's original Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women, and there are certainly a few of those to go around, starting with Lisbeth's  sadistic legal guardian Bjurman (Peter Andersson). She's under psychiatric observation by the state for a crime she has committed as a minor, and the depraved Bjurman wants to keep her in a state of sexual servitude. (A glance at her charge sheet - or her stony, don't-fuck-with-me face - might have persuaded him against the wisdom of that.) One nasty revenge scene later, Salander is free to go back to what she does best: hacking into people's computers, namely Blomqvist's.

Meanwhile Blomqvist, in classic noir style, has been summoned to the mansion of octogenarian billionaire Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube, a dead ringer for the older Jimmy Stewart). Vanger is still mourning the disappearance of his teenage niece, Harriet, 40 years earlier, and hires Blomqvist to sift through dusty boxes of evidence in a cottage on his estate. The main clue is a list of women's names and phone numbers scrawled on the front page of Harriet's diary that the police never managed to explain. When snooping Salander sends Blomqvist an email explaining their meaning, the craggy journo and the bisexual tearaway form an odd couple to solve the mystery.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was made for Swedish TV, and it sadly shows, with a ponderous small screen pacing seemingly timed for commercial breaks. Despite the use of computers to zoom in on old photographs, it's more Midsomer Murders than big-screen techno-mystery, and it doesn't take a degree in computer science to figure out that the fruit rots close to the Vanger family tree. An American version is in the works, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may be that rare thing - a European film that might actually be improved by a Hollywood remake. Go ahead, Tinseltown - do your worst. Nick Dent