Second in 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' trilogy falls short of first
Maybe I was just too excited to see this second installment of the Stieg Larsson trilogy because of how much I loved the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." It was a taut, engaging thriller, featuring one of the most mysterious and compelling female characters I’ve seen in a while — Lisbeth Salander played by Noomi Rapace. She’s back, but she’s been away from Sweden for a couple of years, hiding in various places around the world. She left poor lovesick Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) behind without a word of her whereabouts. But she has returned to straighten out that sadistic-pig lawyer Bjurman, who has failed to write her glowing case reports as he promised after their last vengeful encounter. However when Bjurman turns up dead and Lisbeth is blamed for it, she must enlist the help of Mikael to clear her name and find the real killer. Only she insists on working alone. Now frankly, that was half the fun of the last movie, watching poor Mikael try to keep up with the fiery Lisbeth. In this film, they only get together briefly and her story is much more interesting than his. Also missing is a better mystery to be solved. This one is filled with creepy Nazis, giant cliched henchmen and less-than-stellar plot twists. You still have to watch it to see what happens to Lisbeth, but the film doesn’t play nearly as well as the first story. My gut tells me this one won’t be as successful as the first film, so chances are we’ll see film No. 3 sooner rather than later.
