Directed by
Daniel Alfredson
129 minutes
Rated MA
Reviewed by
Sharon Hurst
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Synopsis: Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is back after some time abroad. She jogs the memory of her sadistic guardian, Bjurman, that he should provide satisfactory reports about her. Meanwhile, editor of Millenium magazine, Michael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist), has commissioned a pair of young journalists to research a sex-trafficking ring. When the journos are murdered, followed by Bjurman’s murder, Salander is accused of all three crimes and a nationwide hunt ensues. Hiding out, Salander communicates remotely with Blomqvist as together they close the noose on the murderers, and some rather extraordinary things about Salander’s past and her connections to some very unsavoury characters emerge.I’m a great fan of the Millennium trilogy of novels. Certainly, as the series progresses, reading-wise, more and more characters and convoluted place names are thrown into the mix, along with countless subplots, to sometimes baffling effect. To this film’s scripting credit, the screenwriters manage to pick the eyes out of the plot, work with the main threads and deliver a gripping thriller, which, however, may still be hard to follow for those who haven’t read the books.
I wasn’t quite as excited over this edition as the last, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but nevertheless, director Daniel Alfredson shows how the thriller genre can be done in a really intelligent style. There is no overplaying of characters, and even though some of them are quite bizarre, they still remain within the realms of the real world.
Much emerges of Salander’s past, especially that period in her life which gave rise to the title. Just as the first film/book gives us plenty of nastiness of men towards women, so this continues as we learn of the brutality displayed towards Salander’s mother and what gave rise to Salander’s vicious hatred of many of the men in her life.
We are introduced to many new characters - Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), a nasty Russian defector, Ronald Niedermann, a hulking brute of a guy, Salander’s girlfriend, Miriam Wu, Salander’s previous kind guardian, Palmgren, along with a swag of detectives – Modig, Bublanski and Prosekutor Ekstrom to name a few.
The film’s look is unfortunately quite dark and grainy, with not enough visual interest, but this is compensated for by the electrifyingly mesmerising persona that is Lisbeth Salander. Rapace plays her again with nuance and mystery. Nyqvist again is solid and credible as Blomqvist, another complex and interesting character with a sense of social justice and possibly the only one who believes in Salander’s innocence in this episode. More is made in this film of Erika Berger (Lena Endre), Mikael’s editor and love interest, and there is terrific rapport between these two important characters. And suitably, the film moves towards a particularly powerful finale which neatly sets the scene for the final part of the trilogy.
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