The Girl Who Played With Fire

Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Yasmine Garbi, Ralph Carlsson, Georgi Staykov
Directed by: Daniel Alfredson
Rating: R
Genre: Foreign, Drama, Thriller
2009

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) comes to the aid of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) when she is accused of murder.

Review:

Tim: I was a huge fan of Steig Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy. I enjoyed the first film, although I admit it had more than its share of flaws. I was really excited for The Girl Who Played With Fire, as it was my favorite book in the trilogy. At this point, the characters have been well established, and we can further dive into their story. This movie is fairly faithful to the book, although (as you might expect), it is abridged.

I feel the same way about the cast in this film as the last. Namely, Noomi Rapace is pretty fantastic and Michael Nyqvist is pretty awful. I can't remember a movie where the two leads were so polar opposite. Rapace brings so much to the complex role of Lisbeth Salander. Besides physically matching the description in the book, Rapace brings an inner strength that you expect to see in Lisbeth. She is quiet, but contemplative and intelligent. I really, really enjoyed her performance. On the other hand, I maintain that Nyqvist was horrendously miscast as Blomkvist. Blomkvist was my favorite character in the books, and one of my all-time favorite characters. He was charismatic, intelligent, dedicated, and interesting. Nyqvist's Blomkvist is a boring, forgettable, dull, ordinary man who appears to do nothing throughout this film. Watch this movie closely and answer this question- what exactly does Blomkvist do? In the books, he is such an important character- his tireless dedication to find the truth pushes everything forward. In this movie, he appears to do a lot of staring and talking, but it's not demonstrated how he actually impacts anything at all. It was horribly disappointing. Some of the blame here goes to the script, but Nyqvist desperately needed to give us a reason to care about his character.

The story is interesting, but it had a very good source. I thought the movie did a fairly good job of cutting the less important scenes and keeping the vital ones in. I was still disappointed in the reduced, insignificant role of Erika Berger, but at least she had more to do in this film than the last one. As this was my favorite book, I was particularly excited about the conclusion- it's one of the most harrowing, difficult, shocking conclusions to a book I've read in a very long time. This movie is faithful to the source material, but consistently misses out on opportunities to make it dramatic and exciting. I suppose a certain part of me appreciates the toned down, restrained, subtle version of the story. However, this is an incredibly dramatic story, and this movie misses opportunities to make us feel nervous, excited, scared, bewildered, or shocked. It is too subtle, and the quality suffers.

I would likely say that the 2nd book was my favorite of the trilogy, and I'd agree that The Girl Who Played With Fire was better than the first film- but just barely. There was so much potential here that remained untapped. I appreciate the faithfulness of the adaptation, but I wanted more. This is once again a good movie, but lacking in drama and emotion. I hope the third and final film in the Swedish trilogy can finally put all the pieces in the right place and create a great movie.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 7



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest