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

The second installment in the increasingly-popular book series from Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire continues the dark, mystery-driven tale of ex-con hacker Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace) and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). Returning to Stockholm from a sunbathed stint at an island resort, Lisbeth quickly discovers she's been framed for murder.

The corpses in question are a couple who'd been researching a Southeast Asian sex-trafficking ring patronized by several influential Swedish men. One of them worked for Blomkvist's Millenium magazine, killed right before he would have published the names of several of the operation's powerful customers. Mikael instantly recognizes that Lisbeth isn't the murderer and searches through the sex ring's known names to find the truth, while she learns some surprising details about her absent family members.


While the first film was both an intriguing character study and intricate mystery- and primarily dealt with these themes separately- the sequel brings a new mystery that's much more personal for the characters and also much more action-packed. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of further developing and showcasing the strengths of Lisbeth and Mikael. They spend 99% of the film apart, and she spends most of it alone and silent, so much of the narrative is Lisbeth running around trying to steal information from those involved in her frame-up, and Mikael running around trying to find Lisbeth through her sometime-lover Miriam and boxing partner Paolo (an actual real-life boxer). Meanwhile there are various gruff-faced henchmen set on taking them all out to protect the secrecy of their sex-trafficking ring. There really isn't much time for meaningful conversation or attention to character.

That being said, The Girl Who Played With Fire does work quite well as an intriguing mystery/thriller with its fast pace and menacing new villains. Lisbeth has plenty of chances to be badass and in control, which are the main qualities we all like about her, plus she goes undercover a few times with a hideous blonde wig! Exciting. As Mikael tries to track her down as well as find the real killer, he learns some shocking facts about her past and the life-altering incident that was only hinted in the first film. It was great to be given more insight into her history and personality, but I think the film missed an opportunity to have Lisbeth really respond to it. Mikael gains the information himself, and she is later confronted with an aspect of it (trying not to be spoilery, sorry), but it's never actually discussed.

I feel like I'm really bad-mouthing this film, but I thought it was quite good. I loved the action, mystery, and new characters, and was happy as long as Noomi Rapace was given a chance to shine as Lisbeth. It's a more straightforward kind of story than the first, and while enjoyable as a thriller, it misses some opportunities to focus more on its characters (poor Mikael basically becomes an information dump). Had this been a movie by itself without its more complex, nuanced first installment, I probably would have been wholly satisfied, but I couldn't help looking back to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo while watching its sequel. I assume the book handles things better.

4/5

Original art for this film (available on etsy)

Further Reading:
Dark of the Matinee review
The Flick Chick review