The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire picks up with Lisbeth Salander leaving the Caribbean and returning to Stockholm where she pays a visit to her guardian, Bjurman, to remind him of their mutually beneficial deal and assure him that she expects to exit court-appointed guardianship as they agreed upon.

The follow-up to The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo is intense and mysterious as the film follows Lisbeth Salander (Rapace) deeper into her own history as she and Blomkvist team up this time to uncover the details of a sex-trafficking scandal that will rock both Swedish political circles and Salander’s life at the same time.

Rapace’s Salander is as serious and withdrawn as ever as facts begin to emerge about who she really is and what dark secrets lie in her past. The details of her life are a messy tangle of intrigue and bad deals almost from her birth down to the final scenes of the film.  Of course, Blomkvist (Nyquist) is there, as usual, to stand up for Salander and remind her that not all men are dangerous and want to harm her.

The film is interesting but a little halted in places as the story develops. And you can see the ending coming early in the film but that’s ok, especially if you like the twisted intrigue of the story and you haven’t read the books.  The characters don’t always seem to know where they’re going and with Salander and her girlfriend, Miriam Wu, looking so much alike it was easy to get distracted in a moment when they were sharing a scene; thankfully they had only a few.  Nyqvist is handsome and strong as Salander’s “protector.” Overall, the story, as it unfolds, is a good fit with the previous film.

If you’re looking to get into the Swedish film version of the Stieg Larsson books you won’t be disappointed in this film.  Check it out and enjoy the subtitled version – it requires reading but you get the look and feel of the emotions of the characters that is less evident in the only real DVD extra, an English overdub.