The first book in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series was so huge a bestseller that it isn’t surprising the Swedish-made film adaptation has proved almost as big at the European box-office. It is a fine psychological thriller which sticks so closely to Larssen’s plot that it’s almost as long as Avatar. If Larsson’s prose is superior to the cinematic language of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, it just shows you can’t have everything.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is hired by an ageing tycoon to look into the disappearance of a favourite niece 40 years ago. Blomkvist, who is about to be jailed after losing a libel case for his radical magazine Millennium, gradually uncovers not one but many murders, aided by Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a bisexual researcher and abuse victim, and is shot and almost strangled in the process.

The characters are given inordinate time to establish themselves. But the last hour, during which Rapace in particular distinguishes herself, cranks up proceedings to a level that better-known directors than Oplev would be proud of.

The clues that Blomkvist and Lisbeth find from old photographs and newspaper clippings are all they have to go on. It is an intriguing process, even if it is spun out, and the film becomes one-third whodunnit, one-third horror story and the rest a more orthodox thriller.

It is well shot and more than decently played, though Nyqvist can’t quite compete with Rapace’s gamine yet hard-edged presence. If the whole trips up with an ordinary first few chapters, Rapace, Blomqvist and Oplev ensure that it delivers in the end.