Out of Frame: The Girl Who Played with Fire
It's no fun being a middle child. You lack the lustre of everything being new that comes with the first, and the moment anyone knows there's another coming after you, everyone just wants to move on to the next thing. The Girl Who Played with Fire plays like the poor, forgotten middle child in the string of adaptations of Stieg Larsson's mega-bestselling thriller trilogy: a little bland, and with a tendency to act out in ridiculous ways to try to draw attention to itself.
The ingredients that made the first film of the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so good are still here. Noomi Rapace is back as Lisbeth Salander, the dark-haired, rail-thin, cyber-punk hacker who disappeared with a bundle of cash at the end of the last film, and Michael Nyqvist returns as Mikael Blomkvist, the leftist magazine reporter who became her unlikely sidekick. But whereas the first film thrived on the odd-couple interaction and surprising sexual tension between the pair, Fire keeps them apart for nearly the entire movie.
It could have played on the tension of whether these two would find their way back to one another, but that tension just isn't there. For one thing, the movie takes a large chunk of its first hour just figuring out what it's going to be about. There's a prominent subplot about human trafficking and attitudes regarding prostitution, but just when you think that's going to drive the movie, Lisbeth gets framed for a number of murders, and she's on the run and in hiding, while Mikael tries to figure out who framed her and why. The trafficking subplot is still there, but relegated to an afterthought. Meanwhile, more of Lisbeth's past, and the violent relationship with her father brought up in the first film, is explained further.
But none of it ever feels like any more than a series of incidents, some of them falling victim to the worst of action movie clichés. There's a villain here -- a hulking blonde brute who literally feels no pain -- who seems to have stepped right out of a Bond movie, and brings with him all the horrible plot devices that entails. For instance, when he has Lisbeth's lover and a boxer who has become involved in the proceedings in a barn both knocked unconscious, there's no reason for him to not kill them with his bare hands and then burn down the barn. But since the plot requires that they stick around a little longer, he leaves them lying there and sets the blaze, which not only rouses them, but also provides cover for their escape. It's a big, dumb move, by a big, dumb bad guy, and it pushes Fire into big, dumb territory its predecessor never came close to.
Add to that a visual palette from new director Daniel Alfredson far more utilitarian than the dark tone set by Niels Arden Oplev in the first film. Alfredson tries to make up for the lack of tension with explosions, and by letting his camera linger on an extended lesbian sex scene -- the latter unfortunately plays out as an insulting bit of stereotypical pandering to a male audience, especially given the novels' feminist slant and distaste for male objectification of women. The attempts to excite or titillate fall flat, and the film's 129-minute running time feels like a drag, whereas the first one was a nail-biter from start to finish.
By the climax (which features yet another jaw-droppingly unlikely turn of events), if you find yourself thinking that it seems unlikely the film is going to be able to draw all of its various plot threads to a close, you'd be correct. Very little is resolved, and unlike Dragon Tattoo, which was self-contained even as it left itself open for its sequels, Fire has no reason to exist without whatever is yet to come in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which will come out in the U.S. this fall. Here's hoping that film rises somewhat closer to the bar set by the first.
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The Girl Who Played with Fire
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Written by Jonas Frykberg, based on the novel by Stieg Larsson
Starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist
Running time: 129 minutes
Rated R for brutal violence including a rape, some strong sexual content, nudity and language.
Opens today at E Street, Bethesda Row, Shirlington, and Cinema Arts.
View the trailer.