The Girl Who Played with Fire

Original Release: September 18, 2009 (Sweden)
Directed by: Daniel Alfredson
Written by: Jonas Frykberg (screenplay), Stieg Larsson (novel)
Produced by: Søren Stærmose
Running Time: 129 minutes
Box Office: N/A

In the second installment of Stieg Larsson’s "Millennium" trilogy, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) and Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) are once again caught up in a brutal murder investigation. Blomkvist returns to Millennium intent on exposing a billion dollar sex trafficking ring. Then, a researcher and a Millennium journalist who are just about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered and Salander’s prints are found on the weapon.
Cast & Characters
Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Peter Andersson (Nils Bjurman), Michalis Koutsogiannakis (Dragan Armanskij), Annika Hallin (Annika Giannini), Sofia Ledarp (Malin Erikson), Jacob Ericksson (Christer Malm), Reuben Sallmander (Enrico Giannini)
Photo Gallery
Production Notes
The follow-up to "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl who played with Fire" refers to an incident from Lisbeth’s childhood when she doused her abusive father in petrol and set him ablaze – an event, it transpires, whose consequences she must now face. Offering less of a cut-and-dried storyline than the first instalment, this film spends its running time carefully arranging the narrative dominoes in order to have them topple in the third and final film. The focus in this second installment falls on the character of Lisbeth Salander. Accused of a triple murder, she is drawn into tangled web of intrigue that leads back to her murky past, while Mikael Blomkvist does everything in his power to prove that she is innocent.

The second film starts not long after the first case is concluded. Mikael Blomkvist is back writing for Millennium magazine while Lisbeth has just recently returned to Sweden from being abroad. Mikael and his coworkers welcome two new additions to their staff who are researching a sex-trafficking ring and plan to expose those involved. Meanwhile, Lisbeth returns to the home of her guardian, Nils Bjurman, to threaten him with the video she had made of him raping her, claiming that if he should not meet any of her demands, she will release the video to the press. One night, Mikael goes to the home of his two new coworkers to pick up some materials for their report, but he discovers that they have been murdered. Not long after that, Bjurman is also found murdered. Adding to the mystery is the fact that the murder weapon found at the first crime scene has Lisbeth's fingerprints on it. She becomes the prime suspect for all three murders and must lay low while investigating who is really responsible. At the same time, Mikael also sets out to prove her innocence with his own investigation.

Nyqvist and Rapace continue to play the leading roles, accompanied by a very notable ensemble, including Lena Endre, Peter Andersson and Per Oscarsson. The experienced Daniel Alfredson directs. Following the success of the first film in cinemas and the sale of more than 21 million copies of Stieg Larsson’s books, there had been a tremendous level of interest in "The Girl Who Played With Fire", both in Sweden and abroad, making over 2.3 million in Scandinavia. In Spain, the film went straight to the second place on the box office after its opening weekend end of September. Time Magazine wrote: "To find Lisbeth Salander administering her special form of justice to her enemies in the pages of Stieg Larsson's best-selling trilogy — or to see her incarnated onscreen by Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is to acknowledge the eminence the character has so quickly achieved. Salander is the new Hannibal Lecter of crime literature. In Rapace, it has an actress who brings a memorable literary character to indelible movie life, as Vivien Leigh did for Scarlett O'Hara".