Like its predecessor, the second film of the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” features another awesome performance by Noomi Rapace! The storyline is Lisbeth-driven and the film makes you craving for more. But the sequel to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” does provides the necessary bridge for the final film. A good, suspenseful film overall.
Images courtesy of © 2010 Music Box Films. All Rights Reserved.
TITLE: The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden)
YEAR OF FILM: 2009
DURATION: 2 hrs., 9 minutes
DVD INFORMATION: Swedish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English 5.1 Dolby Digital, Widescreen 2:35:1, Subtitles: English
RATED: R (For brutal violence including rape, some strong sexual content, nudity and language)
COMPANY: Music Box Films
Released Dated: October 28, 2010
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Based on the novel by Stieg Larsson
Screenplay by Jonas Frykberg
Executive Producers: Anni Faurbye Fernandez, Lone Korslund, Peter Nadermann, Ole Sondberg, Mikael Wallen
Associate Producer: Jenny Gilbertsson
Line Producer: Susann Billberg-Rydholm
Coordinating Producer: Jon Mankell
Music by Jacob Groth
Cinematography by Peter Mokrosinski
Edited by Mattias Morheden
Casting by Tusse Lande
Art Direction by Jan Olof Agren, Maria Haard
Costume Design by Cilla Rorby
Starring:
Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander
Lena Endre as Erika Berger
Peter Andersson as Nils Bjurman
Michalis Koutsogiannakis as Dragan Armanskij
Annika Hallin as Annika Giannini
Sofia Ledarp as Malin Erikson
Jacob Ericksson as Christer Malm
Reuben Sallmander as Enrico Giannini
Yasmine Garbi as Miriam Wu
Ralph Carlsson as Gunnar Bjork
Georgi Staykov as Alexander Zalachenko
Hans Christian Thulin as Dag Svensson
Jennie Silfverhjelm as Mia Bergman
Per Oscarsson as Holger Palmgren
Sunil Munshi as Dr. Sivarnandan
Anders Ahlbom as Dr. Peter Teleborian
Micke Spreitz as Ronald Niedermann
Johan Kylen as Jan Bublanski
Tanja Lorentzon as Sonja Modig
Paolo Roberto as Paolo Roberto
Magnus Krepper as Hans Faste
Based on the international best-selling novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire is the explosive follow-up to the literary and cinematic hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In this second installment of Stieg Larsson’s phenomenal “Millennium†trilogy, Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. A researcher and a Millennium journalist about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered and Salander’s prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and violent behavior makes her an official danger to society. Mikael Blomkvist, Salander’s friend and Millennium’s publisher, is alone in his belief of Salander’s innocence. Digging deeper, Blomkvist unearths evidence implicating highly placed members of Swedish society – as well as shocking details about Salander’s past. He is desperate to get to her before she is cornered – but no one can find her anywhere.
Stieg Larsson is known in Sweden for his contribution to sci-fi fandom but to the outside world, he is known posthumously for his “Millennium” trilogy especially with the novel “Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate women)” aka “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, the first novel of the trilogy and a novel based on manuscripts by Larsson written but unpublished until after his death in 2004. In 2008, Larsson became the second best-selling author in the world and the trilogy had sold 27 million copies in more than 40 countries.
In 2009, the film received its Swedish adaptation and the film which was created for $13 million would go on to earn $102 million worldwide and now a US version based on the novel has been greenlighted and currently, an American production of the film is now being filmed.
With the third and last film of the trilogy titled “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” currently screening in US theaters, the sequel to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” titled “The Girl Who Played With Fire” makes its way onto Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of Music Box Films.
Like the first book in the Millennium Trilogy, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” (which was published in January 2009) became a #1 best seller. While the book received positive reviews from reviewers, the sequel also did quite well in the box office as the $4 million dollar film went on to make $62 million worldwide.
The film takes place a year after the events which transpired in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Hacker Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace) has managed steal money from the Henrik Vanger and Wennerstrom’s accounts and used the money to fund her vacation around the world, purchasing the latest in technology, finding new areas to live, while using new identities.
Meanwhile, journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) is still working at Millennium Magazine alongside his sometimes lover/boss Erika Berger (played by Lena Endre), and fellow staff.  The group is in talks with hiring a new employee named Dag Sevensson who is working on a story to blow the cover high profile individuals tied to sex trafficking in Sweden and those involved in the high office who abuse underage girls. Erika receives approval from Mikael and the crew in hiring Dag.
Meanwhile, as Lisbeth manages to get a new home in Sweden while staying in the Caribbean, she decides to return to Sweden after spending a year abroad and she visits her former employer Dragan Armanskij and finds out her former guardian Holger Palmgren is still alive after his stroke. She goes to visit him and spend time with him and then gets back to business of hacking and hacks into her current guardian’s computer.
While she does her check on her guardian Bjurman (the man who raped Lisbeth), she finds out that he is planning to remove the tattoo she put on him (a tattoo that says he is a rapist and sadistic pig).
Lisbeth finds out that Bjurman has not been reporting positively to his superiors about her and thus she pays him a visit to give him another reminder of their deal.  So, after she breaks into his home and holds him at gunpoint with his own gun, she warns him that he must continue to file those reports and he better not remove those tattoos. Also, if he does anything wrong, she will send the video of him raping her to the media outlets and if anything bad happens to her, that video will automatically be sent to those outlets.
When she leaves, Bjurman is upset and calls someone up to take care of her and to retrieve the video of him raping her.
Lisbeth then goes to visit old friends which include her former flame Miriam Wu (played by Yasmine Garbi) who has no place to live but since Lisbeth has a new place to live in the city, she offers her old apartment to Miriam and tells her that it has been paid for the entire year. The only condition is that she must forward her mail to a P.O. Box that she gives her and of course, Miriam can’t resist getting a free place to live.
Meanwhile, at a family function, Mikael receives a call from Dagg who is about to go on a vacation with his girlfriend Mia Johansson (his girlfriend also wrote a thesis on sex trafficking for her doctorate). Dagg tells Mikael about making a change for his article and including an important name of a man that goes by the mysterious name of “Zala”. Mikael said it maybe too late but he’ll see what he can do. Dagg also ask for Mikael to meet with him real quick to pick some new photos for the article up at his apartment .
When Mikael arrives at Dagg’s apartment complex, he notices all these people standing outside the apartment saying they heard gunshots. When Mikael walks into Dagg’s apartment, he finds both Dagg and his girlfriend shot to death and a gun left behind. And sure enough, police have traced the gun to Bjurman and on that gun was the fingerprints of Lisbeth Salander, who is now the prime suspect in a double homicide.
Jan Bublanski (played by Johan Kylen) leads the police investigation and Mikael tries to defend Lisbeth and tell him that there is no way she could have killed Dagg and his girlfriend. There was no way. But the police feel they have the evidence and now must find her.
Mikael now feels that because Lisbeth saved his life (as seen in the last film), he must do what he can to help her and acquit her of these crimes. But things don’t look good as the police go to visit Bjurman in regards to his gun being used in the deaths of two people, and to find out that someone has killed Bjurman as well. And because he was Lisbeth Salander’s guardian, police now feel she has a motive for revenge.
With no leads and no idea where Lisbeth is located, Mikael does all he can to investigate the people who met with Dagg for his story and sees how it relates to Lisbeth. Meanwhile, Lisbeth does some investigating on her own.
But unbeknown to Lisbeth, there are people out there who want her dead.
Will Mikael be able to help Lisbeth?
VIDEO:
“The Girl who Played with Fire” is presented in widescreen (1:85:1). Because I am reviewing a screener disc and not the finalized version, I can’t comment on overall picture quality (as the version I was viewing seemed a bit compressed). But I will say that for those who do want the best in picture quality for the film, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” is available on Blu-ray.
I can say that one thing in which the original film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” definitely shined was its location and the many shots of various locations with both Mikael and Lisbeth doing quite a bit of traveling together. For “The Girl Who Played With Fire”, there is less emphasis on location and more action-based shots and also shots that focus on actress Noomi Rapace’s character.   May it be capturing facial expressions to bedroom scenes or disguises, the cinematography for this second film is much more personal, especially since the two main characters are not together for the majority of this film.
AUDIO & SUBTITLES:
“The Girl Who Played with Fire” is presented in Swedish Dolby Digital 5.1 and English 5.1 Dolby Digital. Since I am reviewing a screener DVD, I can’t comment on the English dub as my screener did not come with the English soundtrack. But for the most part, dialogue was clear for the Swedish soundtrack. Audio was primarily center and front channel-driven and there are a few action-based sequences but I didn’t really notice any major surround usage. But once again, this is a screener DVD and not the final DVD.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“The Girl Who Played With Fire” comes with the following special features:
- Theatrical Trailer – Featuring the trailer for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and upcoming releases from Music Box Films.
Note: Because we are reviewing a screener disc, there were no special features included and I am going what is printed on the back of the DVD cover insert.
My first foray into “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” came from my wife. Her family members have loved the novels and my wife was going crazy reading all three novels and then watching the film. She has told me many times to read the novels in the trilogy but with so many books in my reading queue, I figured, why not see what the hype is all about and watch this film for myself.
And as I watched “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, I was drawn in by the performances of Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. Their performance was magnificent, as was the cinematography by Jens Fishcer and Eric Kress. Just the amount of footage shot in various weather conditions and locations was quite impressive but most of all, bringing the novel to life (as my wife would say).
The first film was not only suspenseful but it literally sent chills down my spine. And I have to admit, I loved the first film and had high expectations for the sequel. Of course, my wife had warned me prior to watching the film if I was willing to read the second book but being as busy and stubborn, I refused to read the book and wanted to tackle the film head on. Afterall, the first film was so spectacular, I expected the pairing of Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace to be fantastic.
But I quickly realized, the pairing between Nyqvist and Rapace was nowhere to be found until the final ten minutes of the film. As a matter of fact, the film ends rather abruptly. There is no feeling of a true ending like we saw with the first film and immediately, you realize that the second film was just a bridge for the third film.
But that’s not to say that “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is a bad film because its not. As a matter of fact, Noomi Rapace does a wonderful job playing Lisbeth Salander and I admit that with the first film, I was really caught up with her character and just loved watching Rapace play the role of the spunky, dark Lisbeth. But at the same time, what made “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” work so well, was because the characters of Lisbeth and Mikael were like the odd couple. Two very different individuals who just bonded. And how they bonded, despite the much darker storyline of the first, it took the viewer by surprise and won us over. You had a well-written story, cool character and just the circumstance of these two together was just impressive.
And I felt, OK…this couple hasn’t seen each other for a year, I can’t wait to see how they react when they get together in “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and I waited….and waited. And realized, these two are not going to be together in the film. And unfortunately, the moment that they were together…it was the final minutes of the film under unfortunate circumstances.
But while the first film featured the two working together, and they do work together albeit separately, this film is quite literally two independent stories of Lisbeth trying to find out who set her up while Mikael tries to find Lisbeth before she gets herself killed and also doing what he can to vouch for her innocence.
Another interesting character development in this second film are the introductions of Lisbeth’s friends. Her lover Miriam Wu plays an important role in the film and also her boxing buddy Paolo Roberto (in which the Swedish boxer plays himself) gets a good dose of the action scenes for this second film and not Mikael, which I found quite interesting.
But “The Girl Who Played with Fire” is a Lisbeth film.  We get to learn a little about Lisbeth’s past and learning that her trauma goes even farther when she was incarcerated as a child but by saying that, I was told by my wife and a few friends that the film adaptation of the second book is quite different. As mentioned, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” tries to show us why Lisbeth likes to be a loner, why she has this shell around her and rarely lets anyone in and heard that the book does a great job in portraying her loneliness, her solitude and her being disconnected with the world around her.
I know people who have watched it and have read the books and have commented to me that the book focuses more on Lisbeth that too much of that emotional focus is lost because the film tries to focus more on the cat-and-mouse storyline. Personally, there were quick scenes of Lisbeth’s past as a child and maybe these things are explained in the third film but unfortunately, without having read the books, even I felt that I may have been missing something and after watching the movie, I felt I had a barrage of questions for my wife who is a diehard fan of the Larsson’s trilogy and she loves the books and her answer to me was, “want to know more about Lisbeth? Read the book!”.
I often wondered how the film would have played out if it was directed by the first film’s director Niels Arden Oplev and received a screenplay by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg. But Daniel Afredson did a good job but I felt the pressure was more on Jonas Frykberg because the sequel would have so many high expectations. Alfredson takes a methodical approach and what we get is a plot that features less off the darkness, less of the torture but the pacing keeps you on your feet with its suspenseful storyline.
“The Girl Who Played with Fire” keeps you guessing and keeps you wondering what will happen next but it does try your patience and by the end of the film, you are left a bit confused and a feeling of “is that it?”. And yes, that is it… but you’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out how it all ends in the third and final film of the Millennium Trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” .  I’m truly hoping the third film delivers with its final payoff and making us feel that this buildup from this second film and the way it ended without a finale but more like a “too be continued” type of film, I hope the final film ties up all the loose ends of this second film. At least I hope so!
If you enjoyed “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, definitely give “The Girl Who Played with Fire” a chance!
