With a new director (Daniel Alfredson) taking charge of the second film in the Scandinavian version Millennium series, The Girl Whi Played with Fire is not at all a disappointment but is less striking and less memorable than the first film, who introduced the characters of the trilogy. The judgment may be more severe than the film really deserves because the it is certainly a well written and well built crime story, with solid characters brought to screen by a team of actors who each makes his job wonderfully, from the leads to the smaller parts. It is probably the surprise effect that is unavoidably gone and maybe also the more standard cinematography that replaces the frozen landscape that dominated The Girl with The Dragon Tatoo. Yes, the Swedish summer can be very pleasant but the winter films better.
source http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216487/
There are more biographical details that we learned about The Girl in the title of the movies, and the action of the film turns around her family and her traumatic childhood we had a glimpse about already. Noomi Rapace is as good as in the first film, but she still keeps enough secrets to have us interested for her fate in the final film of the series. Michael Nyquist‘s character is slightly relegated to the role of the classical seeker of truth, but his acting is still so good that I continue to be concerned about Daniel Craig taking over his role in the Hollywood version in-making (although I like the actor and I believe he deserves and can make much better than a Bond).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwvAvXUxc4
Maybe the secret of the magnetic force of these films is that faced with the most sordid vice or violence or put under the darkest physical or psychological threats the heroes created by Stieg Larsson remain without doubt human. Too bad that these series un-naturally end in a trilogy. The quality of the dialog and the building of tension, the sophistication of the crime story and the human dimension of the characters ask for more. On the other side, the sonata is one of the most perfect pieces in music and it always is composed of three parts. There may be logic in fate sometimes.