The Girl in the Spider’s Web

The psychologically troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander gets renovated into a superhero-cum-female-James-Bond, played by the chameleonic Claire Foy, in a story that has Salander working for an American computer programmer (Stephen Merchant) who wants to steal back a powerful nuclear-weapons program he created for America’s National Security Agency. Written by Steven Knight, Jay Basu and director Fede Alvarez, loosely based on David Lagercrantz’s continuation of the late Stieg Larsson’s franchise, the plot is as murky as Pedro Luque’s dim-lit cinematography. It has something to do with a society of super-gangsters led by Salander’s twisted sister (Sylvia Hoeks), but Alvarez doesn’t let us linger to make sense of it all; he keeps the action set-pieces coming, and if we’re never fully engaged, at least we’re never bored. J.L.