The Girl Who Played With Fire
Rating: 7/10
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist
Director: Daniel Alfredson
So the sequel to the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo hits the cinemas, long after the books in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy have been bought, read, re-read and lent to friends.
We rejoin Michael Nyqvist's journalist Mikael Blomkvist; still working for the Millennium magazine and still determined to crusade against the wrongs of the world; in this case, he begins helping a junior reporter who's looking into a sex trafficking ring.
While Blomkvist's got his nose into the seedier side of the world, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is picking up where we left her at the end of Dragon Tattoo - sunning it up. However, it's not long before she heads back to Stockholm and her past - but not back into Blomkvist's life.
Things get even worse for the damaged Salander when she's apparently framed for the brutal murders of the journalists Blomkvist was working with in the sex trafficking investigation.
Blomkvist doesn't believe Salander could have had any hand in this - and is soon working round the clock to try and clear her name. But the more he tries to help, the deeper he realizes the conspiracy goes. And for Lisbeth, it really couldn't get more personal.
The Girl Who Played With Fire is a superior thriller within its genre - yet it is markedly different from the last film - in many ways.
It feels more blockbuster and is a bit more of action thriller compared to its predecessor (there's even lesbian sex and a car chase thrown in) and in some ways, that's also part of its problem.
Rapace and Nyqvist are as brilliant as ever - but thematically and because of the narrative, they spend the majority of the entire film apart. What that means is the reasons you deeply loved the first one - ie the sparky relationship between the hack and the antiheroine hacker - isn't really the major thrust of this one. It's a shame because Nyqvist and Rapace are a good pair and there's real emotion when they finally meet at the end. Talking of the end, it's very designed to leave you waiting for the third film but that's for spoiler talk.
The sex trafficking plot also fades into the background very quickly and while it's entangled in Salander's life, it's a shame that it just disappears. A lot of the film will soften the initial view we had of Salander, the hard as nails hacker - but there's some scenes which show she's lost none of her edge.
These are minor niggles though - and it's fair to say The Girl Who Played With Fire is an intelligent, clever thriller - nowhere near as provocative as its predecessor (there's some great debate over the ethics of publishing and revealing sources which will appeal to the more media savvy) but it does more to flesh out Salander's character; and it has to be said that comes at the expense of Blomkvist's.
While The Girl Who Played With Fire is pacier and more of a
blockbuster than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, you may end up
feeling that the best is yet to come in the third and final
outing.
Here's hoping.
Watch the trailer for The Girl Who Played With Fire here.
