THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (2009)
D: Daniel Alfredson ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre,
Peter Andersson, Michalis Koutsogiannakis
The second installment in Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy peels back a couple more layers of Lisbeth Salander's backstory, and if you thought she had issues with men the first time around, it gets worse. The story picks up a year after "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" left off. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is back at Millennium magazine, which is about to blow the whistle on an international prostitution ring. Salander (Noomi Rapace) has slipped back into Sweden, more or less undercover, to take care of some unfinished business. There's a murder, a few of them, and Salander's the main suspect. This is a matter that needs to be investigated. Our detectives are on the case. What's different from the previous film is that this time Blomkvist and Salander are operating in separate spheres. Each is aware of the other's activities, mostly by computer, but they share almost no screen time and barely connect. And the focus shifts, from the two of them and their evolving relationship to Salander, and Rapace's charismatic performance in what's already an iconic role. Long before the bloody resolution, it's clear that this has become Lisbeth Salander's story. And Noomi Rapace's film.
