The Girl Who Played With Fire
Lisbeth Salander is the most fascinating female character in modern popular culture. Her actions speak louder than her words, and when she does speak, believe me, it’s in your best interest to listen. I don’t envy Rooney Mara, from David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” for the task she has in Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s posthumous best-seller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Remaking any foreign film is especially dicey, though highly likely if Hollywood smells money to be made, and I suppose it was only a matter of time they get their hands of Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, even if the Swedes have handled it effortlessly on their own. “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” still starring “Dragon Tattoo’s” Noomi Rapace as Salander and Michael Nyqvist as journalist Mikael Blomqvist, is the second startling chapter of this onscreen trilogy.
Blomqvist is back working at Millennium magazine after a stint in jail for libel, and this time, they’re working on a story of sex trafficking. But as he learned in the first film, playing with fire gets a journalist burned, and it isn’t long before the main authors of the story turn up dead. And when Lisbeth is implicated in their death, her and Blomqvist’s paths cross once again as they look to uncover the truth.
The conspiracy at the heart of “Played With Fire” is more conventional than the mystery that drove “Dragon Tattoo” (and Daniel Alfredson’s direction makes no bones about that) but no less compelling, as Lisbeth and Blomqvist (on their own separate paths) do some sleuthing of their own. We know Lisbeth is being set up, but what we don’t know (or at least are less sure about) is why, and by whom (especially when her brutal guardian is found murdered). One of the johns about to be implicated in Millennium‘s article seems like a good bet, but that can only lead you so far in such an investigation. It’s when Blomqvist uncovers the name “Zala” that darker secrets are ready to be revealed.
It’s unfortunate how some people are still allergic to the idea of watching a foreign film. Or I guess reading is the more appropriate word. That’s why most films come with dubbed English tracks on DVD, though I’ll still do subtitles, thank you. One misses out on so many great cinematic experiences. From “Let the Right One In” to Chan Wook-Park’s revenge trilogy and “Thirst” to “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Red Cliff” to Sweden’s stunning adaptations of the Larsson’s intoxicating Millennium trilogy. I guess that’s part of why Hollywood has taken to remaking (or at least talking of remaking) some of these classics. And if they match the material with the right filmmaker (as they did with “Let Me In” and Matt Reeves), well, there’s something to be said for their ambition. Putting Larsson’s thrillers in the hands of Fincher feels safe for all the right, risky reasons. Who better than the director of “Fight Club,” “Se7en,” “Zodiac,” and “The Game” to match up with what directors Niels Arden Oplev (who directed “Dragon Tattoo”) and Alfredson (who directed this and the just-released “Hornet’s Nest”) have accomplished?
