The Girl Who Played With Fire

Review by Anthony Morris

When we left feisty hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) at the end of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, she was relaxing in the tropics with a whole lot of someone else's money. 

But it's hard to make a thriller out of that, so before long she's back in Sweden hanging around her old haunts (and girlfriend) just in time to be framed for murder. 

Meanwhile, crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is entangled in a story about human trafficking that reaches to the highest levels, which means there are people out there willing to kill to keep it buried. 

It shouldn't surprise anyone that eventually these two storylines converge even if our two leads don't, and while this chilly Swedish film ticks over like a well-oiled SBS-standard murder mystery there are enough twists and quirky moments along the way to keep your attention firmly on the screen. 

Part of the appeal of this kind of mystery to a writer with an axe to grind is that they're enthralling enough to keep people wanting to know what'll happen next without being so complicated that there isn't room for anything else in the story. 

The axe here isn't quite so obvious as it was with Dragon Tattoo - women are again being mistreated but men die too, and now Lisbeth can more than handle herself - but the strident hammering against brutality against women (and the kind of men who practise it), coupled with Lisbeth's damaged wariness around others, is what makes this stand out. 

Without it, all that's left is a fairly basic mystery thriller that has one of the most open-ended and least satisfying endings to a mystery in recent years. 

Don't worry though : the final film in the series The Girl Who Stirred the Hornet's Nest isn't far away.

4 out of 5

The Girl Who Played With Fire
Australian release: 23rd September, 2010
Official Site: The Girl Who Played With Fire
Cast: Michael Douglas, Carey Mulligan, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Charlie Sheen, Susan Sarandon
Director: Oliver Stone