“The Girl Who Played With Fire” is an edgy, riveting crime thriller with a unique, brainy and tough female lead character and a tattooed computer expert with a shady past. It is a film that puts most other entertainment films in theaters this summer to shame. This top-quality crime tale has enough mystery and surprises to please any movie fan.
It is the kind of production Hollywood used to do so well, yet this delightful entertainment treat is no Hollywood movie – it is Swedish.
“The Girl Who Played With Fire” is the next film in the series based on the bestsellers by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Like the first film, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which is now playing locally at the Hi Pointe Theater, it is an international hit.
As a gritty crime thriller, it is not dialog-heavy, so reading subtitles is less of an issue, but the well-crafted, unpredictable plot certainly gives those who like to tackle a puzzle more to work on than the average thriller. Seeing the first film is a plus but this new one stands on its own.
Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) was convicted on defaming a powerful corporation when his proof of their misdeeds mysteriously disappeared, but took a job investigating a decades-old mystery as he awaited the start of his jail term. The job brought him in contact with a brilliant but taciturn computer hacker-turned-security analysis Lisbeth Salander (the remarkable Noomi Rapace). Tattooed and pierced Lisbeth is a private, even secretive young woman with a mysterious, violent past. But someone with her won sense of right and wrong is a strong-willed relentless foe.
The first film focused more on Mikael but this one delves more into Lisbeth’s story. A year has passed and Mikael has finished his sentence and is working on an investigative piece about the sex trade, one that will embarrass some highly placed officials. Lisbeth vanished a year ago, but has recently secretly returned to Sweden, although she has told almost no one, including Mikael, that she is back. Just as Mikael’s magazine, “Millennium,” is due to go to press with the exposé, three people turn up dead along with evidence that points to Lisbeth.
This thriller depends on story twists and strong characters rather than CGI explosions and car chases. “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” like its predecessor, delivers clever plotting that is neither predictable nor unbelievable. Characters are fully rounded people and one never knows what lies around the next bend, not the same old familiar types playing out familiar tropes. It is not a profound or significant tale but it is the kind of fresh, engrossing entertainment moviegoers desire. This story is more straight-forward, stripped of the subplots in the first film, but still an always surprising film that keeps one off-balance.
“The Girl Who Played With Fire” is a worthy successor to “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” whetting our appetite for the upcoming third in the series. This excellent film, in Swedish with English subtitles, is now playing at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema. B+ –Cate Marquis