Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played With Fire)

Okay, here's how it went down.

Not that kind of going down.

With the first installment, I watched the film, and didn't read the book. But the film was great, and I was too busy raving about it that I didn't have time to read the book anymore.

Now for the second installment, I read the book first. And like I said, I was blown away. But when I watched the second film, I found it kind of... bland.

Maybe because her hair looks... normal.

There are two reasons for this, in my opinion.

1. A book is a medium which can convey a lot of things, so much more than the film medium. It can convey a character's thoughts, way better than film can without resorting to voice-overs.

"Honestly... what am I thinking? Three guesses."

As such, when you read the book before watching the movie, you may feel a bit disappointed because the high you got from reading the book will never be duplicated when watching the film.

But that is just a general rule. There are exceptions to this. There were in fact instances wherein I read the book first, and found the movie well-made. There's The Fellowship of the Ring. (I haven't read Return of the King and only read one-fourth of The Two Towers.) Then there's also Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Then there's also... oh wait, there isn't any more.


2. This film had a different director. In my opinion, Daniel Alfredson wasn't as good as Niels Arden Oplev (the one who directed the first film). Then again, maybe it's just me, because like I said earlier, I read the book first. But then again, there are also statistics to back this up. Let's check out two of the biggest movie websites on the Internet.

IMDb gave the first film a rating of 77%, and gave the second film a score of 68%. Rotten Tomatoes gave the first film a score of 86%, and gave the second film a mediocre 69%. So I don't think it's just me.

Anyway, enough about the book for a while. Let's talk about the movie. I don't think it was set up pretty well. There's supposed to be a twist at the end, kind of like in the first film. But because of poor set up, it came out like a dud firecracker. Damn you, Alfredson. I was waiting for that twist.

Nope, that's not the twist.

Then there's the issue of Lisbeth Salander being such a badass. A lot of fans regard her as one of the most badass female heroines right now.

And not just because of the fact that she looks kind of good in a wig.

Kind of like if Hermione Granger and Harry Potter had sex, and Hermione gave birth to a daughter, it would be Lisbeth Salander. Although she did appear badass in this film, she was way more badass in the book.

I said stop talking about the book!

"One more mention of the book, and
I'm gonna aim my gun at your balls and fire."

Don't worry, I'm almost done here. In the book, there's this character called Paolo Roberto, who's a boxer and a friend of Lisbeth's.

"I'm a boxer and a friend of Lisbeth's."

I thought he was a fictional character. But then I saw the opening credits, and was quite surprised to see the name Paolo Roberto. "What, as himself?" I thought to myself. "He's a real person?" Turns out he is. A real Swedish boxer. And he plays himself in this movie. That's one more thing I know about Sweden.

Even boxers can be weird sometimes.

One last thing: the girl who played Miriam Wu was hot. She'd make really great company on cold Swedish nights.

She kind of looks like a slut in this lighting.

Flickan som lekte med elden. Sweden/Denmark/Germany. 2009.


Rating: Six point five out of ten.



*pic from Stigmatz



You may also want to read the review for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.