The Girl Who Played with Fire [Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden] (***)
Directed
by: Daniel Alfredson
Starring:
Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Georgi Staykov,
Hans Christian Thulin, Micke Spreitz, Yasmine Garbi, Ralph Carlsson, Johan Kylén,
Tehilla Blad, Per Oscarsson
Seen:
November 18th 2010
***
Out of ****
From
the first frame of The Girl Who Played with Fire it’s clear as day that this is
not the same team that made The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The director and screenplay
writers were replaced between the first and second instalment of the highly
successful Swedish movie. The movie feels cleaner somehow, the gritty feel of
the original replaced with a more sanitised look, almost as if the book has
been filmed in documentary style. For all the talk I’ve heard of this being a
darker movie than the first one I’m not necessarily convinced, as the darkest
parts here are still scenes revisiting Salander’s rape from the first movie. It
is more sexually charged however, as Lisbeth pursues a lesbian relationship
with little left to the imagination.
Lisbeth
Salander (Rapace) is on her way back to Sweden, and Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist)
is still working with Millennium magazine. Lisbeth looks more settled, and when
she returns to her old boss, she is shocked to hear that her previous guardian,
Holger Palmgren (Oscarsson), did not die from his stroke as mentioned in the
previous movie. She visits him in one of the movie’s more tender scenes, and
this prompts Lisbeth to visit Bjurman (Andersson) again, just to make sure he
still complies with her rules. A young investigative reporter, Dag Svensson (Thulin),
joins the Millennium team with a big story; he is about to expose prostitution
and human trafficking on large scale in Sweden. His girlfriend, Mia Johansson,
is also writing a thesis on sex trafficking for her doctorate. When Mikael goes
to visit them one evening however, they’ve been murdered, and together with the
sudden murder of Bjurman, suspicion falls on Lisbeth.
The
man actually responsible for the murders turns out to be quite a menace, as he
is a giant who, through some congenital disease, can’t feel pain. He is the
henchman of the mysterious Zala, who Mikael investigates in an attempt to find
Lisbeth. Lisbeth and Mikael only share three things during the movie: an email,
an instant message, and one look, letting the viewer stew in the tension of
Mikael not finding the impulsive Lisbeth before it’s too late. Lisbeth is on
the run, investigating any lead she can find.
This
movie is not as much of a detective thriller as the first movie, rather opting
for a more straight-forward, almost point-and-shoot approach. The viewer isn’t
drawn into the fact finding as much as in the first movie, and the conclusion,
while still a cliff-hanger, isn’t as harrowing. That is not to take anything
away from this one, since the viewer has by this time really sided with
Lisbeth, and what happens here really hits hard. Noomi Rapace has now become
the character of Lisbeth Salander, and delivers the stand-out performance of
the movie. The entire cast makes the whole though, and not one person leaves a
dead spot in the story.
The
movie feels a bit slower or less urgent than the first movie, and I personally
believe most series experience some sense of derailment when switching
directors and/or writers. I believe The Girl Who Played with Fire is still a
good movie, but it needs to be seen in the context of the bigger series, and
not as a stand-alone offering. Too much from the first movie is directly
referenced here, and too much is left undone for the third to complete. So even
though the movie is slowly paced during it’s first third, the pace does pick up
from that point to deliver another firecracker of a movie.
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