"The Girl Who Played With Fire" - REVIEW

The second installment in a trilogy is usually hampered by its own position, as it's forced with introducing new characters and plot elements, without being able to fully resolve them. Granted, there are notable exceptions (The Empire Strikes Back), but as a rule of thumb, the second chapter is usually guaranteed to leave one less than satisfied at its conclusion. Surprisingly, this isn't entirely the case with Stieg Larrson's "Millennium" trilogy. The second book, "The Girl Who Played With Fire," despite ending on a cliffhanger, resolves enough of its own storyline before its cliffhanger to be a relatively satisfying middle installment that doesn't feel like it's all just...middle. Unfortunately, in the attempt to get Larrson's trilogy out into theaters, the trilogy's image takes a hit with the film version of the second novel, despite a few small improvements over the first.

When we last left Michael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), they had just wrapped up a 40 year old mystery and gone their separate ways. In the year or more between Dragon Tattoo and Fire, they haven't spoken, and Lisbeth is only recently making her reappearance in Sweden. This coincides with Blomqvist's magazine "Millennium" decision to publish a massive expose on sex trafficking and violators in police and government positions. It's in these early stages of the plot that I was given false hope by director Daniel Alfredson and screenwriter Jonas Frykberg. To back track, one of my issues with the novels is that Larrson seems to spend unnecessary amounts of time in ordinary events before slowly lurching into the main plot, and then hurrying lots of action up until the end (this problem transfered over to the first film). With that said, I was glad to see that Frykberg dispensed with the lengthy set-up of Salander vacationing in the Caribbean (the film starts with her leaving), and that early on Rapace is given scenes that allow her to express a wider variety of emotions, albeit under the character's steely front. Cinematographer Peter Mokrosinki kept the camera moving more often, leaving the scenes feeling less static than the first go-round, at least initially.

The problems really start as the film moves into its main plot, which involves Salander being framed for triple homicide. Frykberg and Alfredson make a huge error not by nature of speeding up the story, but in how the story is condensed. The subplot involving boxer Paolo Roberto, already a bit odd in the novel, is so rushed on screen that what little impact it had on page evaporates on screen in a limply shot fight scene in a hidden shack(as does the tension for most of the action). Scenes with Blomqvist at the "Millennium" offices feel unnecessary, and the decision to limit Blomqvist and Salander's on-screen exchanges (via computer messages and hacking) to um, one, makes Blomqvist seem almost like a non-entity. That he's played so flatly by Nyqvist (who has an embarrassingly amateurish "ducking" scene at the end) makes you question why women are so attracted to him at all. Rapace fares better, if only because it seems like she's actually trying to improve upon what she's given, but that doesn't stop the film from mishandling the character, filming her quiet moments from a distance and without juxtaposition so as to make her seem vacant rather than pensive.

And as the film progresses, poorly juggling the balance among Salander's quest, Blomqvist's personal investigation, and the police investigation (which is really given the shaft), it becomes somewhat tedious, instead of more interesting. The stakes are being upped constantly, but there's no impact, especially in the revelations of information about the mysterious character "Zala." And by the time it limps through its conclusion, instead of leaving you enthralled and eagerly awaiting the final film (due in October), Alfredson and crew will most likely just leave you bored and disappointed, for they've sucked out most of the fire out of Larrson's work in what feels like a cheap cash-in, instead of a proper adaptation.

Grade: C