A Prophet Speaks: “The Girl Who Played With Fire” isn’t as Cool as She Used to Be

Movie Title:	The Girl Who Played with Fire
Studio:	Music Box Films
Director:	Daniel Alfredson
Genre(s):	Thriller
Release Date:	July 9th, 2010
Rating:	R

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a pleasant surprise this past spring. It’s classic Mystery pacing, and suspenseful plot kept the viewer engaged, and the fearless performance of Noomi Rapace as “Lisbeth Salander” elevated the film to a height few thrillers ever reach. Why its sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire forgets most of the things that made the first film so great is beyond me. The tension is not just lessened, it is rarely present, and the mystery feels solved.

Hmm... There's not much fishy going on here.

The film completely disconnects itself from the original as the story about the Vanger family from Tattoo is  never mentioned. This shouldn’t be an issue. A sequel definitely should do some things different, but unfortunately what it decides to do different makes it much less compelling.

Story-wise what it changes is (and I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible) the two heroes are not really helping anyone but themselves. In the previous film they are hired and have to work through a mystery, which gave the film an incredibly sophisticated detective feel. The new film loses that as the bad guys are less creepy, the action is more prevalent but poorly executed, and while you see the main characters just as much they feel less fleshed out, less quirky than they were in Tattoo.

When you know who the real bad guy is with a good 45 minutes to go, that hurts the film quite a bit. The build-up to meeting the bad guy is relatively intense, but when you meet the cartoonily evil character that I will call (minor spoiler) “Zala” the tension dies immediately. The actor playing the character, Georgi Staykov is poorly made-up with burn scarring, and sort of looks like someone from Dick Tracy.

I feel no pain, and I am big, and blond. You have never seen bad guys like me in other films before -- Shut up, no you haven't!

The big, “Blonde Tank” character- the muscly bad guy, turns out to have an unbelievably ridiculous relationship with someone at the end of the film. His character is so incredibly boring, so been there done that, that he makes many of the actions scenes dive-bomb into 80s-like mockeries, and he is in the film far too much.

The bad guy in the last film was so cool because he seemed perfectly nice and normal, and turned out to be a serial murderer. He was creepy, and without the cartoon network feel that Fire’s characters persistently suffer from.

I’m so beyond tired of the way the franchise treats men. It’s such a cliche to make dudes evil rapists, but it pushes beyond silly in this film. That was a problem with the first, but the fact that every man that capable little Lisbeth runs into has a history of beating and raping women or possibly just garden variety sexual perversion, is totally preposterous. It gets old- fast, and we already saw an entire film of it.

Die Pervs! Die!

Author Stieg Larsson seemingly modeled the only nice guy in the series after himself, “Mikael Blomkvist” played by Michael Nyqvist, and it really degrades the believability of the franchise. At least the film franchise, as I have yet to read the trilogy.

There’s not a nice way to say this- the action scenes suck. They all are shot, edited, and choreographed like those from a stupid 80′s action flick. That blonde tank mentioned before doesn’t help matters as he looks like a typical villain from the poor films that the scenes already echo.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the best action films ever are from the 80s; Die Hard is an 80s flick. This film doesn’t echo Bruce Willis though, its got more of a Dolph Lundgren/Jean Claude feel to its action sequences. In a serious mystery, that is a very, very bad thing.

I will bury you in poor action sequences!

The difference in tone is unquestionable. The first film was more of a mystery and thrilled through the investigation, the second is much less investigating, much more thrilling. I should say, it attempts to thrill more because it doesn’t succeed. The thrills aren’t organic, they don’t flow out of the story like they did in Tattoo. They are obvious attempts and thus are unsuccessful. The tone from part one goes away and is replaced by something more tiresome here.

I’m a fan of Scandinavian cinema, in all its fantastic fearlessness. One of my favorite films of all time was the Swedish Let the Right One In. That film was directed by Tomas Alfredson, and interestingly enough his brother, Daniel Alfredson is at the helm here. The last film had a different director, Niels Arden Oplev, who showed much more skill in the tone and pacing of Tattoo than Alfredson shows with Fire.

The sequel is an unfortunate, but major step in the wrong direction for the franchise, but I am curious to see what happens with the third installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest as Alfredson will step in behind the camera once again.

Did you call me silly? That was a bad idea...

The last film was actually somewhat of a hit here in the states as well as the world over. It made over $8 million here and is the largest grossing limited release of the year. World-wide it has pulled in over $100 million. At this point, Fire is racking up some solid reviews. If this was an American film, the problems would be adressed, but many critics blindly love foreign films and indies. I however must be totally honest with all of you, and rain on your parade. The Girl Who Played with Fire doesn’t even get close to touching the first film.

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About the Author

Adam G.