The movie version of The Girl Who Played with Fire is a little disappointing - the book features a sixty plus page prologue which find Salander in the Caribbean where the presence of a wife beater at her hotel ruins her plans to lie low, but the film jettisons this thread of the story completely, no doubt to tell the story in couple of hours, and concentrates on the main storyline. If you've not read the book then I don't suppose this really matters but I missed this segment of the story and its exclusion made the film feel rushed to me.
Of course these films were originally made for Swedish Television and were edited together for international film release but you'd never tell from looking at them. The tension is handled well and the plot that sees Salander framed for the murder of two human trafficking researchers is handled well enough, but this film didn't have the wholeness of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Where it does trump the previous film is that Salander is on screen much more of the time and she is the character that makes it all work. Mind you to really experience the story you must start with the book, particularly as there is so much missing from this adaptation.
I thought the film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was excellent but this one falls short of such brilliance. Still it's an entertaining enough thriller and does offer a hint of Steig Larsson's exceptional plotting. And it does set things up nicely for the third and final movie.
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