The Girl Who Played with Fire

The weakest entry in the trilogy. Bland and lacking a spark, just your typical made for TV detective film full of initially hard to read schemes. Personally, I prefer a gloomy island with a secret than bureaucratic espionage, especially when it’s so sterile. (09/01/2010)

I don't know if I have changed over the years since watching the first film in the series, or if the quality of the creative team has changed in such a fundamental way, but while I accepted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with satisfaction and didn't regret buying a ticket to the movie theater, the second part didn't satisfy me in any way, not even as a filler for a late evening shortly before bed. I approached the second part with lower expectations having been informed by sober comments. It's a typical example of a film that doesn't know how to work with its potential and doesn't know how to sell its characters to the audience. It lacks tension, and it lacks atmosphere. The way Alfredson approached directing, he might as well have been filming an unambitious television series episode meant to fill airtime. Moreover, it is clear to me that even the literary source itself does not have the power and value of the first part. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this film is even less than average. I now understand why overseas they only copied The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - they didn't see the commercial potential in the sequel. Overall impression: 45%. (09/24/2017)

I'm really looking forward to the American version of this. It's going to be very interesting because the Swedes have some plots here that the Americans already managed to exhaust in the first film. In this film, Lisbeth focuses on the return of her legality, returns to Sweden, deals with her close circle of loved ones, and finally makes more time for her lesbian friend. And she's trying to shake the murder charge. Blomkvist has returned back to normal. But what happened to Lisbeth's devilish appearance, which is so iconic for her and one of the main attractions of the whole series? What happened to the interesting detective story? And by the way, Lisbeth is 23 in the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 24 in the Swedish version, so why would she be 28 after a year and a half? But I don't care anymore that Lisbeth will be 27 in the final film. (01/12/2012)

There's no point in tediously philosophising about how much the second film falls short of the excellent first part, because it can be beautifully summed up in one word: significantly. The chilling Swedish setting, the tension between the characters, the clever script, the powerfully escalated plot, and everything that made Oplev's film so unique is only marginally gnawed at here and somehow mysteriously distorted by the American effect hidden behind some of the twists and dialogues. And if the first episode made me wish it lasted a minute or two longer, here there were too many deaf spots that often made me yawn my way to the finale. The positives in the form of Nyqvist and Rapace's performances persist, of course, but the change of director this time didn't do much good. 60% (10/31/2013)

Compared to the first installment there was a huge drop in quality. I'm not saying it was a disaster, but it wasn’t fair of the creators to get me so thrilled by the first film and then fail to deliver in the second one. The problem wasn’t so much in the acting but in the script. It seemed to pull all the interesting bits out of the book but there was nothing to hold them together. Parts of the story just floated freely in space without any context or even logic. It's a shame, the potential of the book got largely wasted and I can't rate it better than a 3-. (01/04/2017)