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It's like a private party for the millions of the Stieg Larsson fan club, this Swedish film version of his second best-selling book, "The Girl Who Played With Fire."
By necessity, so many of Mr. Larsson's themes are barely touched upon in the picture. His readers will understand the shadowy allusions, but unknowing film audiences will be puzzled, but entertained by the compelling, driving pace and suspense.
- Starring: Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist.
- Rating: R for sex, nudity and violence. In Swedish with subtitles.
Now dead six years, the Swedish journalist has become one of the world's most popular novelists despite the fact that his "Millennium Trilogy" is a dark, scathing indictment of his country's security system and its violent misogyny.
Its two heroes are deeply flawed, neurotic, yet brilliant at their own fields -- Lisbeth Salander at computer hacking and Mikael Blomkvist at investigative journalism, with Salander one of the most interesting creations in a decade or so of fiction.
Full of subplots and arcane history, the books are unfilmable, unless you reduce them to their bare bones. Done.
Both the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" directed by Niels Arden Oplev and its sequel by Daniel Alfredson, concentrate on the parallel lives of Salander and Blomkvist instead of the large issues that obsessed Mr. Larsson.
In the first installment, the two teamed up to expose corporate corruption and unsavory behavior. Along the way, they slept together, but Blomkvist is a tireless philanderer and Salander dropped him.
"Dragon Tattoo" was a sexually violent experience as Salander played out the anger of her horrible life as a victim of institutional abuse -- and abuse is a tame word.
Zalachenko, her father, also figured prominently in her violent past and he surfaces in "Fire" as a Soviet-agent defector who, under state protection, runs a prostitution ring using captive, underage women from around the world.
It's now about year after the first book and Blomkvist, his reputation restored by Salander's Internet gumshoe work, is working on a story for his magazine, Millennium, with a young couple who have pried the lid off the Zalachenko sex ring and can name prominent government officials who are customers.
They are soon murdered, along with Salander's parole agent, the sexually twisted Bjurman. Stockholm cop Jan Bublanski, another compelling Larsson creation, fingers Salander as the killer, now turning the tables on Blomkvist, who must exonerate her. Salander, however, has bigger lutefisk to fry, or maybe soak, and goes on the lam.
Meanwhile, here in America, the hunt for an actress to play Salander in the U.S.-made films goes on, but why bother? Sweden's Noomi Rapace inhabits this quirky character physically and emotionally. Teach her English and forget about the search.
Michael Nyqvist's Blomkvist is more laid-back and slow to act, and, in this case, to figure things out, as Salander's plight becomes more desperate. It's his turn to save her and it seems he can't get enough speed out of his Prius to get to Gothenburg in time.
In his rough-hewn manner, Mr. Nyqvist manages to capture Blomkvist's humanity and curious ability to land the ladies, despite his cavalier attitude toward relationships.
"The Girl Who Played With Fire" is an artfully composed film, full of the gritty Swedish countryside as well as striking scenes of Stockholm, modern and old. It's also equally as violent as the first film, from exploitative sex to a bloody barn struggle.
And this time, Salander behaves more like Angelina Jolie in an action film than a diminutive troubled soul searching for her own place in Mr. Larsson's badly damaged world.
The book and the film are a bridge between the first and the final one, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." It's not a stand-alone movie, and I urge those coming to Mr. Larsson for the first time to read "The Dragon Tattoo" or at least see it on DVD.
"The Girl Who Played Fire" opens today at the Manor Theater, Squirrel Hill.
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