Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire (15)***

Increasingly isolated, off the grid and deep underground, icy computer hacker Lisbeth Salander's life of minimalist leisure is shattered when she is implicated in a triple murder.
By The Newsroom
Published 27th Aug 2010, 12:56 BST
Updated 27th Aug 2010, 12:56 BST

Of course it's all a ghastly mistake, as her erstwhile collaborator and sometime lover Mikael Blomkvist knows only too well. With a gulf between them Lisbeth and Blomkvist must unearth the truth behind a people trafficking ring that is apparently run by the shadowy gangster named Zala. To do so they must once again confront the vicious denizens of the Swedish underworld including a hulking killer who seemingly feels no pain.

This sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo lacks the overtly sinister drama of the original. While it once again explores the sins of the past – no Nazis, this time – it focuses more on Salander's considerable psychological issues and the repressed memories that lurk just beneath the surface of her carefully constructed veneer.

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Impossibly cool and terribly damaged, Salander nonetheless weaves her way across a landscape made into 21st century noir via the self-same twists that made its predecessor such a joy.

However, director Daniel Alfredson struggles to maintain the energy and mood that made the first film so compelling. It's still novelist Stieg Larsson's world but there's something missing.

What emerges is a run-of-the-mill thriller that combines European policier with standard revenge flick. And Larsson deserves much more than that.