Genre Guesstimation – The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre has been chosen by Satu of Fairy Tale Pictures and it is Bestselling/Popular Novel Adaptations.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of July by sending them to novelideasatu@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Bestselling/Popular Novel Adaptations.…

“She’s in deep deep trouble Paolo, you have to help me.” – Mikael

Number of Times Seen – 1 (8 July 2018)

Brief Synopsis – As Mikael and Lisbeth try to uncover an illegal female trafficking ring, they must find a way to prove Lisbeth’s innocence when she is accused of murdering 3 people.

My Take on it – This is second film of the Millennium trilogy and since its in Swedish, I avoided seeing it for nearly a decade hoping that they would release an English version of the story.

Since I’ve been trying to expand my horizons more over the past few months, and watch more Foreign language films, I decided to give this trilogy a try and boy was I not disappointed at all.

This film is a great thriller that basically picks up right where the previous film ends and quickly moves forward.

The story itself works quite well and they manage to give us a few surprises along the way to help make things even more interesting while also raising the stakes of it all.

The main cast returns from the previous film and Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist once again show how great they are together.

Their onscreen chemistry is great to watch and that helps make their work together seem much more realistic largely due to the fluidity of it all.

This film has a problem since it’s the middle film of a trilogy and therefore dives right into the characters and situations without the benefit of developing anything already mentioned in the previous film and doesn’t have a real ending because the story continues in the next film.

They manage these issues quite well and although this film isn’t as entertaining as the first one, it still keeps the viewer wanting even more from these characters.

Bottom Line – Very enjoyable thriller that picks up right where the previous story ends.  The story works quite well and they hit us with a few nice surprises along the way that raise the stakes every step of the way. The cast is once again great and Nyqvist and Rapace have great chemistry together which helps keep their work together seem very fluid and realistic. Being the bridge film of a trilogy makes it harder to enjoy this film without the others because it dives right into the action expecting the viewer to already be familiar with the characters and also ends in a way that doesn’t give enough closure since the story continues in the nest chapter. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Boxer Paolo Roberto is featured as a character in the original novel and plays himself in the movie. This is quite possibly only the fourth time in film and literature that this has happened. Previously, Richard Kiley was the tour guide voice in Jurassic Park (1993), having been identified as such in Michael Crichton’s novel. Lady Chablis played herself in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) after being a character in the original non fiction book by John Berendt. Finnish painter, Kimmo Kaivanto, played himself in Goodbye, Mr. President (1987) after being a character in the original novel by Pentti Kirstilä. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Comes real close. The story is enjoyable and thrilling, but doesn’t have as much of an impact as the original does.

Rating – Globe Worthy (8/10)

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