The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2009)
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 153
Fresh: 106 | Rotten: 47
Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist remain extraordinarily well-suited to their roles, but the second installment in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy doesn't pack quite as much punch as the first.
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Critic Reviews: 38
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 11
Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist remain extraordinarily well-suited to their roles, but the second installment in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy doesn't pack quite as much punch as the first.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 30,569
Movie Info
The second installment of author Stieg Larsson's best-selling "Millennium" trilogy gets translated to the big screen with this tale of a prominent magazine publisher who launches a comprehensive investigation into Swedish sex trafficking and political corruption. The publisher of "Millennium" magazine, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has built an empire on his ability to shake up the establishment. Approached by a young journalist with evidence that high-ranking Swedish officials are involved
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Cast
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Noomi Rapace
Lisbeth Salander -
Michael Nyqvist
Mikael Blomkvist -
Annika Hallin
Annika Giannini -
Per Oscarsson
Holger Palmgren -
Lena Endre
Erika Berger -
Peter Andersson
Nils Bjurman -
Jacob Ericksson
Christer Malm -
Sofia Ledarp
Malin Eriksson -
Yasmine Garbi
Miriam Wu -
Johan Kylén
Jan Bublanski -
Tanja Lorentzon
Sonja Modig -
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All Critics (153) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (106) | Rotten (47) | DVD (10)
Again, it's worth the price of admission alone to spend time in the company of Sweden's premiere bisexual emo-sleuth...
Top CriticThe Girl Who Played with Fire, may not be as good as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but it's not chopped liver either.
Delivers its first jolts moments after the opening credits and serves up surprisingly tender moments amidst the suspense and heart-pounding action.
Resembles nothing so much as a workmanlike TV crime thriller.
The Girl Who Played With Fire narrows instead of broadens, and while the final scenes are bloody indeed, they frustratingly raise questions the film doesn't care to answer for now.
In Rapace, it has an actress who brings a memorable literary character to indelible movie life, as Vivien Leigh did for Scarlett O'Hara.
If you were fortunate enough to see the first film and enjoyed it, chances are you will also enjoy this entry.
The entertaining yet unspectacular atmosphere cements the movie's place as a mild disappointment...
... Raises the stakes, telling a story that is at once further reaching and more intimate.
The cinematography, almost like a tranquil counterpoint to the ugly crimes taking place on screen, make you feel like moving to Sweden would be the coolest, most gorgeous decision you ever made.
Lisbeth Salander remains the riveting centerpiece of the two films that follow on from Dragon Tattoo, but, alas, her continuing story has been winnowed down in a way that makes it -- and her -- feel smaller than before.
An Audio Conversation with Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, star of The Girl Who Played With Fire, on KPFA Radio, San Francisco.
Where the first film pinned you to your seat as its mystery unfolded, the plodding pace of the sequel will leave you fidgeting.
Part 2 of subtitled crime trilogy with same brutality, sex.
Lisbeth is as much of a scourge as Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name, and just as mysterious, cool, and resilient.
The saving grace in all this, perhaps, is how the character of Salander continues to feel like a unique alternative to a typical movie heroine.
Thankfully, revelations within the complex and interwoven storyline occur just in the nick of time as to keep us engaged.
This is a pretty good setup for what might be a routine Hollywood thriller.
Usprkos toga to je Larsson i kod nas ario i palio po knjiarama, hrvatski distributeri dosad nisu imali razumijevanja za vedsku trilogiju
Records onto film all the important moments found in the novel. These moments aren't made into compelling drama so much as crossed off some narrative checklist.
It?s a slicker and tenser film [than the first film] ... however, it?s also lost some of the first film?s icy edginess and sophistication, taking the series more into pulp fiction territory.
...there is a lot of enjoyable art (and artiness) applied to what is essentially a pulp fiction. The villains are Bond-film cartoonish, and it was more fun to see Mikael and Lisbeth work together ... than it is to watch them slowly converge in this one.
For fast-paced suspense, and for at least a hint of the passions which drove Stieg Larsson to expose the long reach of old fascist, and patriachal ideologies into the gloomy modern era of Swedish capitalist culture -- the film delivers.
The second film is more efficient than the first, less concerned with getting all the story on to the screen.
It's a sequel that leaves you wanting more, its shortcomings not negating what remains a stylish, smart and cracking thriller.
Simply not as welcoming, nor rewarding, to novices as its predecessor was.
Audience Reviews for The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden)
Super Reviewer
I love Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, and even if she were just reading the phone book, I think I'd find her performance and the character compelling. While The Girl who Played with Fire isn't the phone book, it's not as interesting as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because there isn't the cold case antiquity of the mystery and the depth of having family drama at the film's heart. Focusing on sex trafficking, what this film does have is a clearer concentration on the theme that prevailed in Larsson's first book, misogyny. It's a theme Larsson handles with ease, creating male monsters and reasons why women like Salander revolt.
Overall, the Millennium Trilogy continues to compel even if this doesn't reach the great heights that the original achieved.
Super Reviewer
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Movie: ID: 770812585 Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) Release Date: 2010-07-09 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Verdammnis (DE)
- Millénium 2 - La Fille qui rêvait d'un bidon d'essence et d'une allumette (FR)
