The Girl Who Played With Fire (Friday, July 9, 2010) (71)

This is the second film in The Girl With/Who trilogy based on the books by Stieg Larsson. Continuing with several of the same characters from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this film opens with a laconic giant trying to extort the police file of heroine Lisbeth from her disgusting financial guardian. At the same time, Blomkvist the magazine editor, is approached by a young journalist who has written an investigative piece on an Eastern European white slavery ring in Sweden. Somehow these two stories are connected through the giant and ultimately the young journalist and Lisbeth's financial guardian are murdered. As the cops begin to investigate, Blomkvist and Lisbeth (working separately) do as well.


The story is very fast-paced and moves along smoothly, but it feels even more trite than the first one. It feels like layer upon layer upon layer of detail and subplots, many of which don't really add up to much. The film feels rather like a massive Rube Goldberg device where one thing leads to another and to another, which seems sorta obvious if you're following along with each step, but convoluted if you're just looking at the overall picture. Director Daniel Alfredson (who seems to have worked almost entirely in Sweden ever) does a decent job, but not a brilliant one with this narrative.


One thing that does upset me is the treatment of Lisbeth. She is a smart woman who is acutely aware of people trying to take advantage of her. She has a hot, naked, lesbian sex scene with a hot girl, which is a bit of a throwaway (as are the several bare-ass shots Alfredson gives us) but it does establish at least that she's into women and (presumably) not men. We know that she was raped and abused by her financial guardian in the first film and we see in this that her father abused her mother (she threw gasoline on him and burned him, ergo the title). She is rather masculinized (at least a butch), I think, riding motorcycles, hacking computers, wearing jeans and t-shirts and keeping her hair rather short.


Yet Alfredson misses no opportunity to sexually objectify her and turn a cynical male gaze on her (for that matter, the poster for the film is unnecessarily super sexy, I think). I don't like that a character who has no interest in sex with men, and who we like specifically because of how she survived her rape, is being made to be a sexual object. I think this is misogyny at it's most sick and trite.


Despite the direction, the acting is still top-notch from Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. They are both still very good in their roles and fit naturally into the scenery they're in. Sadly the script has them onscreen together for mere moments, so it's only one or only the other all the time, losing the wonderful chemistry and camaraderie they had in the first film.


Again, the film feels very American and not really Swedish at all. It is a pretty simple story, actually, but I think its complicated by weird sub-stories that don't go very far. It's not quite as long as the first, but it's over two hours and I'm not sure it needs to be. I think at least 15 minutes could have been cut out (although considering its based on a beloved book, that probably wouldn't go over well with audiences). It's a decent film and generally a fun ride, but nothing brilliant.


Stars: 2 of 4