2.5 tasers
We are reminded, once again, that very few franchises can live up to high expectations. In fact, one of the very franchises that only gets better with age seems to be Pixar…oh….I’m sorry…I meant the Toy Story phenomenon or for that matter, anything Pixar touches.
OK. Let’s please remember that the first movie, the kick-ass, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, with its veritable tour de force performance by Noomi Rapace as the Girl, was a fantastic experience. Now I suspect most of it had to do with director Niels Arden Oplev and screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg . The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo stood on its own two sturdy feet side by side to the book.
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Now fast forward a few months with the much anticipated arrival of the second installment of this bestseller series, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and there is just one question: What’s not to love, right? It has the same actors in the same lead roles (tres important once we are hooked!) and who are perfectly cast in their parts. A miracle that happens not often enough… Then there is the bullet-proof story, the constantly developing and twisting plot, the ever surging violence that makes Reservoir Dogs seem like Toy Story, and the anticipation of millions who have read the novels and can’t wait to see the next installment..
Not so fast… Under the hands of a new Director, Daniel Alfredson and a new writer, the story telling has changed…and it really shows. But for those 3 people out there who have not read the books, please learn: Lisbeth Salander, the superhumanly talented, bisexual, chain-smoking, apple eating, ikea shopper, millionaire, genius computer hacker (Noomi Rapace) is a wanted woman.
Two young professionals who were about to expose the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered and Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. I mean, hasn’t she been traveling the world for the last year or so? Lisbeth involved in the sex trade? Who knew??? To make things even more convoluted, the murdered coupled was working with Millenium Magazine editor Michael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) who of course, is not only her former male lover (let’s not forget the lovely Mimi (Yasmine Garbi) but also the voice of reason and will not believe for a second that Lisbeth could have murdered his colleagues…Does this sound like a man in love???? U got it!
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Now, we do know this Salander chick does have a history of unpredictable and dangerous behavior, after all, wasn’t she declared a danger to humanity and committed to a mental institution???
We do learn more about Lisbeth’s past and what led to the terrible thing that happened in her life as a child…and which unfairly placed her in the hands of authorities. And the unsavory characters are all very engaging: there is a very troublesome and enigmatic villain named Zala, who seems to be crucial to figuring out this entire mystery…and who also seems to have a unique link to Lisbeth. And then there is the biker gang…and the giant…and the guy with the pony tail…but then again, I have learned that Salander, the way she is played by Rapace, may be only 90 pounds and less than 5 feet tall, but man, she is frigging indestructible…and as fast as a lizard! So I never ever feared that my Salander girl would not be able to fight off even the most dangerous, chainsaw-wiedling giant…yes, the one whose balls did not react when she tasered them…that one!
<img src='http://www.mtv.com/shared/promoimages/movies/g/girl_who_
