The Girl Who Played with Fire
In her second big-screen adventure, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has graduated to the role of The Girl Who Played with Fire and the titular Girl continues to be the best thing about this series. Unfortunately, she's surrounded by a plodding narrative buried underneath a pile of dull filler. She also has the disappointing distinction of being this series' lone bright, shining light. Nearly everything else is dull and dingy and pretty much useless. The cast remains a total bore, outside of Noomi Rapace's unique mixture of fearless heroine and bisexually-tinged androgyny. Lisbeth is fun to watch and Rapace oozes a startling brand of charisma, but despite her grand abilities, she cannot save the movie all on her own.
There are simply too few reasons to recommend The Girl Who Played with Fire and the non-Rapace portion of the cast is a big strike against the movie's credibility. The supporting players are simply present in an apparitional sort of way. You can see them on the screen and you can hear their lines being spoken, but there's nothing tangible about their characters. They're just... there. It isn't even that they're all terrible, but rather that they're forgettable and uninteresting. They're supposed to broaden the spectrum of the narrative, but they end up just muddling the focus.
The biggest issue I have with the cast is not quite so invisible and proves to be far more difficult to ignore. Michael Nyqvist reprises his role as embattled journalist Mikael Blomqvist and he's just as wooden as ever. Nyqvist is as boring to watch as the similarities between his actual name and character name are confusing. He wears the same expression on his face throughout the entire movie and he seems to be trying to put us all to sleep. I imagine that footage of Nyqvist reading the phonebook could likely be the perfect cure for insomnia.
The trouble with Nyqvist's lack of presence, purpose, performance, and other meaningful 'p' words is that he occupies such a gigantic amount of screen-time. Matters are further dulled by the fact that Mikael's storyline parallels Lisbeth's journey, but the two barely intersect during the sprawling narrative. This further truncates the movie's dramatic flow, because Lisbeth is so rarely present when the movie needs her most. Nyqvist makes Blomqvist's character arc a truly tedious one and a little Rapace here and there would have helped offset the frustrations caused by Nyqvist's acting.
Despite regularly feeling as though I was drowning in boredom, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly revitalized, pushed entertainingly to the surface, whenever Lisbeth appeared onscreen. She is the movie's single source of energy, which means I needed a lot more Lisbeth and a lot less Mikael. The characters should operate in tandem, helping each other along the way both in narrative-based mystery-solving and in dramatic resonance. But instead, they work against each other, one character eclipsing the other, making us care only in sporadic spurts.
It makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience and not in the way that is intended. Since this latest Girl tale deals with a prostitution ring that leads to Lisbeth being framed for a triple murder, the movie is clearly meant to unsettle. But outside of a few decently jumpy scares, The Girl Who Played with Fire never really managed to crawl under my skin. Rather, it seems to skim the surface and then settles for a few passable thrills amongst the boredom. The mystery plot is pretty standard stuff and even some series-progressing revelations at the end are merely worthy of a slightly raised eyebrow of interest. In the movie's final twenty minutes or so, I was happy that something of emotional importance was finally happening, but it's far too little too late in this case.
That absence of urgency until the movie's end can be mainly blamed on the series' new director. Taking over the reins from Niels Arden Oplev, whose direction of the first movie at least signaled a vigorous approach to the narrative that tightened Stieg Larsson's puffy prose, director Daniel Alfredson proves to have little of the energy exhibited by his predecessor. Instead, he knows how to shoot each scene in a clumsy manner that serves only to accentuate the awkwardness of the unfolding plot. I thought Oplev's direction still left something to be desired in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but at least that movie was well paced and commendably ambitious.
Alfredson's movie is a trivial slice of pop pie, a forgettable flick that occasionally offers a tasty moment, but is mainly stuffed with flavourless drivel. And much of that lack of flavour can be attributed to Nyqvist's performance and Alfredson's direction. At least Rapace brings something unique to the picture. She's almost entirely alone in her ability to connect the narrative to the audience, but she is aided by composer Jacob Groth. As the movie's only standout not named Lisbeth Salander and/or Noomi Rapace, Groth's musical score is sharp and effective. He hits some exciting notes in the context of a grim thriller. But like Rapace's performance, Groth's tunes are unable to rescue The Girl Who Played with Fire from its sordid fate. Lisbeth, that mysterious Girl of the title, is a greatly intriguing heroine and Noomi Rapace was born to play her. It's just too bad that this cinematic series is not remotely worthy of her considerable talents.
