THE GIRL RETURNS: Noomi Rapace as the hit character Lisbeth Salander, in Daniel Alfredson's 'The Girl Who Played with Fire,' based from Steig Larsson's 'Millennium' book trilogy. (Yellow Bird)
After the dramatic events of Tattoo, Salander has essentially dropped out of normal society. Grateful to Salander for clearing his name, Millennium publisher Mikael Blomkvist periodically makes an effort to find her but to no avail. However, their fates again become intertwined when Salander is implicated in the murder of Dag Svensson, a young Millennium freelancer working on a blockbuster expose of human trafficking.
It seems Svensson’s story involved several people from Salander’s past, including her former court-appointed guardian, with whom she had a disturbingly graphic altercation in the previous film. Not exactly a warm fuzzy personality, everyone seems all too willing to accept Salander’s guilt, except Blomkvist, the perennial windmill tilter.
While The Girl Who Played with Fire, clearly establishes characters and issues for the forthcoming third installment, it is more or less self-contained, so viewers should be able to jump into it just fine without having first seen Tattoo. In fact as a tighter less explicit film, it might be more accessible for many viewers. It is also less overtly political, despite Larsson’s notorious leftist politics. However, the film’s serial killer storyline rooted in Sweden’s sinister history of widespread Nazi sympathizing was arguably a wider canvas with greater stakes at play than the more narrowly focused Fire.
Although Hollywood is gearing up to remake the Millennium trilogy, it is hard to imagine any other actors in the lead roles. Noomi Rapace perfectly captures Salander’s strange allure while also conveying the emotional maelstrom contained beneath her icy exterior. While much of the press for the Millennium films understandably centers on her, Michael Nyqvist is nearly as indispensible to the series. Like a Nordic Harrison Ford, he brings a salt of the earth screen presence to Blomkvist that keeps the film grounded for the audience, effectively counterbalancing Salander’s occasional creepiness. Good luck Daniel Craig and Kristin Stewart, or whoever.
Slickly produced, Fire might not match either the intensity or the unsettling explicitness of the first Millennium movie, but Alfredson still keeps it all chugging along quite briskly. Indeed “Fire” is a solid, respectable sophomore outing for Salander, probably the most intriguing screen protagonist to ever wield a laptop and a stun gun. It opens fairly widely this Friday (July 9), screening in New York at the Angelika Film Center, Empire 25, and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.
Joe Bendel blogs on jazz and cultural issues at jbspins.blogspot.com and coordinated the Jazz Foundation of America’s instrument donation campaign for musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Rating: 
3 / 5
3 / 5
