Lisbeth Salander, heroine of the Swedish thriller “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” is a punk-Goth dynamo.
An expert computer hacker, the sullen 24-year-old also is perfectly capable of exacting violent revenge when the man who is her legal guardian (she’s under state supervision after a violent childhood) sexually abuses her.
Her hair is jet black, she dresses all in black, her waifish body is adorned with tattoos (including a large dragon across her back), her face is amply pierced and she enjoys sex with both men and women.
For reasons too complicated to summarize, Lisbeth — dynamically portrayed by Noomi Rapace — joins forces with a middle-aged investigative reporter from Stockholm, Mikael Blomkvist, portrayed by Michael Nyqvist.
He’s facing prison time after being convicted of libeling a corrupt businessman, but before beginning his sentence, he’s hired by an elderly recluse who wants one last chance to solve the 40-year-old disappearance of his great-niece Harriet from the wealthy Swedish family’s retreat.
He’s convinced that she was killed by a member of his tightly knit clan.
Lisbeth and Mikael’s search unfolds suspensefully in the movie, based on the first volume of an international literary sensation, Stieg Larsson’s best-selling “Millennium” trilogy.
As the pieces of the mystery come together, Lisbeth and Mikael realize Harriet’s disappearance is connected to a long-ago series of murders.
The archives of a local newspaper provide them with grainy photos of Harriet at a parade on the day she vanished.
In scenes remindful of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classic “Blowup,” computer software allows them to zero in on the photos of Harriet, who appears to be facing her abductor that fateful day.
Director Niels Arden Oplev weaves Lisbeth’s and Mikael’s troubled back stories with the wealthy family’s sordid past, which includes links to the Nazis.
The result is a finely plotted, stylishly photographed and brilliantly acted whodunit that clocks in at 2 1/2 hours but never seems long.
vam@nypost.com