The Girl Who Played With Fire / Flickan som lekte med elden (2009)

After the rather exciting and excellent The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in March it’s been just a few short months to wait for the next in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire the sequel to the Swedish original. The reviews I’ve read of this instalment have been a bit sniffy, but I can’t see why, it’s just as gripping and thrilling as the first movie.

This movie is more thriller lead than mystery as the first one was, and it involves Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth Salander more than Michael Nyqvist’s Mikael Blomkvist, and the two of them only communicate via email, only meeting up in the last 5 minutes. Salander is a very compelling character, and a strong female lead, with strong views on men who are violent to women. Here she’s framed for the murder of the man who raped her in the previous film, and spends the movie trying to find out who the real killer is, leading her to some very dark places.

The extended cast of characters in this world is expanded on, with Salander’s female lover, and a boxer friend who are both beaten for their connection to our hero. There’s a blond bad guy who can’t feel pain, who comes across as a standard Bond henchman, and some very gory, bloody bits at the end when Lisbeth faces her ‘enemy’, who turns out to be someone surprising.

Rapace and Nyqvist make a fantastic duo, even though they spend all their time apart. Both are magnetic, and the movie really draws you in. I think this is helped in part by the subtitles which really make me concentrate and stop me watching passively. The Swedish settings are as lovely as ever, but I’ve seen prettier in the Swedish Wallander that I’m also watching at the moment. I’m really looking forward to the third instalment. I’m ambivalent about the US remake though.