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

Movie Review: "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

5. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is easily the best movie I've seen in 2010, which may read like damning with faint praise, but this is, in fact, a damned fine movie.

4. This Swedish thriller, based on an international best-selling novel of the same name, packs all the things that makes movies great into its 2-hour, 28-minute runtime.

3. The characters are layered, flawed and terrific with a classic detective pairing of antisocial computer hacker Lisabeth (Noomi Rapace) and magazine reporter Mikael (Michael Nyqvist).

2. The mystery is captivating and filled with unforeseen twists (but not M. Night Shyamalan twists) and there's tense action, graphic violence, romance, sexuality and, well, it's just a really good movie.

1. The book this flick is based on is sure to come to Hollywood sooner rather than later, but I recommend seeing the Swedish version as no American studio will produce a movie of this quality without watering it down from a fine wine into spiked Kool-Aid for mass market appeal.

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"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"
- 2hr 28min‎‎ - Rated R‎‎ - Suspense/Thriller‎ -
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Cast: Peter Haber, Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, David Dencik, Georgi Staykov
Finney's Flicks Grade: A+