The Girl Who Played With Fire

The girl who played with fire is the second novel in the Mellenium series. As computer hacker Lisbeth and journalist Mikael investigate a sex-trafficking ring, Lisbeth is accused of three murders, causing her to go on the run while Mikael works to clear her name.

This is one of those films you need to be in the mood to watch and have the patience to sit through - although its very good, its a long film which is quite raw and gritty.  Their are lots of issues played out in this film that are highly rated and almost taboo.  Issues that you don't always want to see played out on screen.

I have read all the books and I think as the books were somewhat a challenging read this helps to illustrate the issues visually and can help bring more understanding to the novels. Im not sure I would have got this film first time round without reading the novels first.  However with like most novels some key elements were missing and the case that Bloomkvist was working on was only touched apon, unlike in the book this was more key to the main story (understandable as the book was very long they had to cut bits out.) However I don't think this ruined the plot of the story they just choose one key element or story line to focus on and everything else was faded into the background.

What i did enjoy about this film, was the filming style, the direction, the acting and the film photography all fitted in well to the story.  These were all gritty and almost realistic style of filming - not hollywood and blockbuster feel to them. The locations of some of the homes we visited were exactly how you would expect them to be - as in some more hollywood films homes don't feel lived in - they are all clean and precise.  This was the same for the rest of the film and made the whole thing a bit more edgy and unnerving as it all felt so realistic.

I think the overall film was very well done, and was a good crime story/psychological thriller.  The elements of the film worked well and the acting was good (although some of the dubbing was dodgy at times.) If you are into these genres films its well worth watching, and if you havn't read the books I would recommend reading them first.