RECENT WATCHES: The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)

Obviously, when the decision was made to adapt one part of Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels, the decision was made to adapt all of it. The three movies were clearly filmed back-to-back, the cast moving from one part to the next in quick succession. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was released in Sweden in February of 2009. “The Girl Who Played with Fire” would follow in September of the same year. Clearly, the producers of the trilogy were eager to capitalize on Lisbeth Salander fever while the iron was hot. While the initial entry in the series was popular with audiences and critics, opinion on the follow-ups are more divided.

Following her investigation into the Vanger family, super-hacker Lisbeth Salander retreats to the Caribbean with the millions she stole from a corrupt businessman. The death of her mother has her return to Sweden. At the same time, Mikael Blomkvist's Millennium Magazine is preparing a special issue all about sex trafficking. Several prominent men in the Swedish government are to be named as johns. That's before the writers of the article are murdered. Lisbeth is seemingly the perpetrator of the crime, though Blomkvist believes she's been framed. As he attempts to clear her name, he uncovers a mystery circling around a mysterious figure known as “Zala.” 

Though she got title billing in the English printing, Lisbeth Salander was just one of the protagonists in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” We can only speculate on his motivations now, but it seems to me that Larsson was probably aware of her status as the most interesting character in the book. He decided to focus the next two novels entirely around her origin story. Unfortunately, both the literary and cinematic “Girl Who Played with Fire” go about this in a pretty awkward manner. The majority of Lisbeth's personal history is explained in two scenes, where old guys expound on her past and parentage to Blomkvist. Exposition like this was heavy-handed on the page and is even more egregious on the screen.

There is another problem inherent in any version of “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” The first movie and book had a page-turning mystery at the center of its story, a decades-old disappearance and string of murders that couldn't help but draw the reader/viewer in. The sequel can not come up with an equally compelling mystery, attempting to center the plot around the question of “Who is Zala?” The answer to this question is a lot easier for the audience to guess and the investigation, which mostly revolves around simply talking to people, is not as involving. Much like the previous film, this story uses a string of raped and abused women merely as plot devices in a plot ultimately about something else entirely. (No matter how much the book and movie clearly want to be about exposing the dark truths around sex trafficking.)

For the second installment, director Niels Arden Oplev would trade off with Daniel Alfredson. Aside from being the brother of Tomas Alfredson, Daniel is probably best known for extensive work in Swedish television. This probably explains why “The Girl Who Played with Fire” feels so much like a TV movie. Granted, it's not necessarily a bad looking film. Alfredson makes sure to include lots of orange colors in many scenes, pointing towards the inferno referenced in the title. Yet the presentation here is largely pretty flat and plain. This is most apparent during the movie's fight scenes, which are clumsily framed and stiffly edited. The fisticuffs between a boxer and the movie's towering secondary villain are shot from weirdly distant angles and feature some extremely awkward slow-motion. 

A lot of the problems with “The Girl Who Played with Fire” are inherent in its plot. Long stretches of the story removes Lisbeth from the plot, focusing on side characters like her girlfriend or famous boxer Paolo Roberto. (A rare example of a notable figure appearing in a fictional book and then playing himself in the film adaptation.) Likewise, the entire story keeps Salander and Blomkvist apart from each other, removing their chemistry from the plot altogether. The movie only really comes to life when Lisbeth finally gets in on the action herself. When outsmarting a pair of bikers and, most notably, when finally confronting Zala herself. “The Girl Who Played with Fire” has a strong climax, where Lisbeth's indomitable will to survive has her crawl back to life from the brink of death and begin swinging an axe around.

Both Larsson's book and Alfredson's film adaptation function as the gawky middle chapter in a three part story. It even ends on a cliffhanger, feeling less like a complete story in its own right and more like the first half of one. Though the movie is something of an improvement over the book, as it clips out a number of extraneous subplots focused on the police detectives that enter the story and the characters' sex lives. Noomi Rapace is still a captivating heroine and Michael Nyqvist does a better job of making Mikael Blomkvist seem like less of a wiener. Yet “The Girl Who Played with Fire” can only be accepted as a middling sequel. [5/10]