Movie Review: "The Girl Who Played With Fire"

5. "The Girl Who Played With Fire" is everything it's predecessor, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," was not: boring, cliched and unsatisfying.

4. "Fire" picks up a year after "Tattoo" and finds the enemies of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Raplace) closing in on her and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) trying to rescue her while publishing a blockbuster investigation.

3. "Fire" takes Lisbeth's admirable ferocity from "Tattoo" and downgrades it to "The Girl Who Punched Guys In The Crotch With A Stun Gun" and Blomkvist's believable-but-flawed journalistic integrity into sensationalistic probes into the Russian white slave trade ties in Sweeden.

2. It's the kind of plot one might expect from the evil offspring of a James Bond film and a Lifetime movie of the week — "Fire" comes complete with a Bond-esque villian ("a blond tank as one character describes him") that would make Sharky grimmace and a twisted family history with an obvious "Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" reveals and a "Kill Bill 2" moment to boot.

1. "Fire" would be fine if it were a Bond movie, but it seems contrived and even silly dovetailed agains "Tattoo" and hardly serves as an invitation to see the final chapter in author Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium trilogy.

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"The Girl Who Played With Fire"
Run time: 2 hours, 9 minutes
Rated R
Genre: Suspense-Thriller-Drama‎ -
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Georgi Staykov and Sofia Ledarp
Finney's Flicks Grade: C