The Girl Who Played With Fire

Lisbeth Salander (Rapace), tattooed bisexual super-investigator, ace computer hacker and feminist heroine of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling crime trilogy, is wasting her time fighting crime on the street level when her skill set more than qualifies her to be running Sweden if not all of Scandinavia from the very top of the chain of command. But then again, she’s an alienated type and likely wouldn’t adapt well to the 9-to-5 office routine.

Anyway, when police find Lisbeth’s fingerprints on a weapon that killed two journalists who had just blown the lid off a massive flesh-peddling racket, her estranged collaborator Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) resumes his role as middle-aged Robin to her twentyish Batman. As usual, what they uncover is unspeakably sordid and entails coils of conspiracy that extend to the top levels of corporate political power while touching directly upon the personal lives of the righteous sleuths. It’s a heck of good ride if you have the stomach for this kind of violent puritanical moralism, which is basically a left-wing variant of Dirty Harry or Death Wish. Writer Jonas Frykberg and director Alfredson pour on the Nordic chill and gloom till it hurts, and are probably doing for Swedish tourism what Midnight Express did for that of Turkey back in the late ’70s. Good times!

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