The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor, literally Men Who Hate Women) is a 2009 Swedish crime thriller film adaptation of the novel of the same name by the late Swedish author/journalist Stieg Larsson, the first book in his Millennium Trilogy, directed by Niels Arden Oplev. By August 2009, it had been sold to 25 countries outside Scandinavia, most of them planning a release in 2010, and had been seen by more than 6 million people in the countries where it was already released.
The film was released in the United States on 19 March 2010 by Music Box Films, which has also released the second and third films in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire on 9 July 2010, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest on 29 October 2010.
Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a middle-aged investigative journalist with the magazine Millennium, loses a Libel case against corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström (Stefan Sauk) and is sentenced to three months in jail. Unbeknown to him, Mikael is under surveillance by Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the troubled but brilliant 24-year-old hacker from a security firm. She delivers her report on him to Dirch Frode (Ingvar Hirdwall), a lawyer for the Vanger Group.
Blomkvist is invited to a meeting with industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), who hires him to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who mysteriously vanished on Children's Day in 1966. Henrik also reveals that Harriet was once Blomkvist's babysitter. Because of an accident that closed the bridge providing the only access to the Vanger estate, Henrik believes that a member of his family must have murdered her.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth finds out that she has a new probationary guardian, a lawyer named Bjurman (Peter Andersson). Bjurman, a sexual sadist, attempts to control her by demanding sexual favors in return for money, and eventually rapes her. Lisbeth secretly videotapes the rape, and later returns to his apartment where she ties him up, tortures him, forces him to watch the video and blackmails him into allowing her to control her own finances before finally tattooing "I am a sadistic pig and a rapist" on his stomach.
She maintains her interest in Blomkvist's affairs and hacks into his computer once again to monitor him. Blomkvist moves onto the Vanger estate and learns that Henrik's three brothers were all members of the Swedish Nazi Party.
Harriet's father, Gottfried, was an abusive alcoholic who drowned the year before his daughter's disappearance. Inside Harriet's Bible, Blomkvist finds a list of five names alongside what appear to be phone numbers. Police Inspector Morell (Björn Granath) informs him that they are not phone numbers, however, and that his original investigation was never able to shed light on them. Using photographs taken during the Children's Day parade, Blomkvist learns that Harriet was spooked by someone she saw that day who may have been her killer.
Hacking into his computer, Lisbeth finds the Bible clues and decodes them, using her hacker name WASP to send them to him in an email. The numbers relate to verses from the Book of Leviticus concerning the execution of sinners. Before Blomkvist can investigate further, Dirch Frode informs him that Henrik Vanger has suffered a heart attack;
at the hospital, Blomkvist asks Frode if he knows WASP. Blomkvist goes to Lisbeth's apartment to offer her a job helping with the case and after initial reluctance, she agrees. They soon find themselves on the trail of a serial killer of women whose crimes stretch back to 1949 in towns all over Sweden.
When they return to their cottage, Lisbeth, who has a photographic memory, realizes someone has broken in because several items have been moved slightly. Later that night, Lisbeth wakes Blomkvist and they have sex, though she admits to no romantic feelings for him. The following day, Blomkvist confronts an impressed Henrik with the evidence.
At a meeting with the Vanger family, during which he is urged to abandon the case, Blomqvist notices Harriet's cousin Cecilia (Marika Lagercrantz) wearing a necklace he remembers Harriet wearing when she babysat him as a child. After a confrontation, Cecilia says that she inherited it from her sister Anita after she died of breast cancer.
Blomqvist remembers how alike Harriet and Anita were, then realizes that the indistinct photo Henrik had given him of Harriet is actually that of Anita. Sometime later, while jogging in the woods, he is shot at several times and is wounded by a bullet graze to the head.
The following day, Inspector Morell reveals that one set of initials from Harriet's diary match the name of a woman who had worked for Gottfried Vanger. As the women all had Jewish names, Blomkvist and Lisbeth believe their murders were motivated by anti-Semitism. They suspect the reclusive Harald Vanger (Gösta Bredefeldt) of Harriet's murder, as the two other Vanger brothers were already dead by the time she disappeared.
Lisbeth searches through Vanger's business records to trace Harald to the crime scenes while Blomkvist breaks into Harald's house. There, Harald confronts the reporter and almost shoots him, but Harriet's brother Martin (Peter Haber) shows up and instead escorts Blomkvist to his home. When Blomkvist reveals what he has uncovered, Martin drugs him. In the meantime, Lisbeth has discovered that Martin and his father, and not Harald, were responsible for the serial killings and returns to the cottage to find Blomkvist has not yet arrived.
Blomkvist wakes to find himself bound to a chair in Martin's cellar. Martin casually confesses to decades of rape and murder, but denies killing Harriet. While he is slowly garroting the reporter, Lisbeth enters the room and beats the killer with a golf club, injuring him. While she frees Blomkvist from his bonds, Martin flees in his car. Lisbeth gives chase on her motorbike. Panicked and severely injured, Martin collides with the rear of a truck and rolls his car down an embankment. When she arrives at the wreck, he pleads for help but she merely watches as a fire starts in the car, engulfing him. In a flashback sequence, a child Lisbeth splashes gasoline in the face of a man sitting in a car, and then ignites it.
Sometime later, Blomkvist meets with Henrik and Morell to inform them that Martin did not kill Harriet. Returning to his cottage, he finds Lisbeth gone and a note revealing Harriet's whereabouts. Blomkvist flies to a remote part of Australia and discovers Harriet living under her dead cousin's name. He takes her back to Sweden to be reunited with Henrik. In his office, she reveals that she murdered her father following a year of rape and abuse by him and Martin. With Anita's help, she fled the estate when Martin returned from boarding school, fearful the abuse would start again.
In the epilogue, Lisbeth visits Blomkvist during his prison stay and furnishes him with the evidence of Hans-Erik Wennerström's wrong-doings: secret financial records that reveal his complicity in drug trafficking and black market arms dealing. He publishes a new story on Wennerström, who subsequently kills himself. In the final scene, Lisbeth uses her hacking ability to steal millions from Wennerström's off-shore bank account. The film closes on her in disguise in the Cayman Islands.
