The Swedish title of this movie is “Men Who Hate Women.” A more apt title might be “men who hate storytelling.” Well, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word, but the film was certainly made by a crew more inclined to sleep than to dream.Stieg Larsson’s fantastic best-seller, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” can’t quite make the brilliant leap to the screen as it follows Swedish investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who has just published a scathing think-piece accusing an industrialist named Wennerström of money-laundering, arms-selling, fraud, and probably kicking little kittens and offering lap dances in leather bars for fun. Blomkvist is convicted of defamation, which means his office-mates greet his arrival back from the courthouse with aquavit and hearty toasts of “Skol!” before he’s shuttled to his IKEA-furnished, zero-security prison cell for three months.In the six months he gets to tidy up his affairs before his prison vay-cay (one real-life prisoner, in 2006, gushed “here we are treated with steaks, sex and private television airing World Cup games for free” while imprisoned in Sweden), Blomkvist is offered a case looking into the 1966 disappearance of the lovely, smoky-eyed Harriet, of the back-stabbing and fantastically rich Vanger family. (Sweden is such a small country that Blomkvist was actually Harriet’s former babysitting charge, we see in brightly lit, washed-out, soft, breezy beach flashbacks, and the local police chief’s first kiss.) In return, Harriet’s uncle will give Blomkvist more dirt on Wennerström.And someone’s looking into Blomkvist ‹ actually, remotely logging in to his computer. Lisbeth is a textbook rebel, a spikes and black-lipstick wearing wet dream wafting hints of bisexuality and motorcycle expertise. She’s Unix-geek Lex Murphy, sailing through Jurassic Park’s security systems via 3D File System Navigator, all grown up and smoking Sibir cigarettes.What does she want? Vanger hired her to vet Blomkvist. Now, she wants to help him. No reason why, but she’s willing to submit to sexual degradation at the hand of her prison-release guardian for the effort. With the help of Google, a photo printer and some digital photo enhancement straight out of CSI. A newspaper photo of Harriet in the crowd at a parade the day she disappeared leads to the paper’s magnificently thorough archives. In one unused shot, she’s scowling. In a subsequent one, someone behind her is snapping a photo of the parade — and what Harriet must have been scowling at. What do you want to bet Blomkvist can track down this person and the photo and find his killer?But do we feel tenderness, or caring for Harriet? Do we get to meet and loathe the man responsible for her flight?Despite a rich sprinkling of rapists, Nazis, car crashes, sultry Swedes and torture directives lifted from the Bible, there is no tension in this movie. No consequence. No surprises. No haunting twists or evocative layers. No tangled webs of intrigue. No high stakes, or even low ones, for the man responsible for Harriet’s disappearance or those who could capture him. And really, how’s anyone supposed to get worked up over this dear girl’s vanishing if it took her dear uncle half a century to hire an investigator?David Fincher is reportedly working on an American version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” to be released in 2012. Let’s hope its ferocity isn’t limited to the titular two-dimensional ink dragon.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.