THE GIRL WITH WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (Swe/Den/Germ 2009) ***
Directed by Daniel Alfredson

The second of the Millennium series, THE GIRL WITH WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is not as striking as the first THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and contains more story which sort of hinders the excitement of the original.

The title comes from Lisbeth, while she was a child, pouring gasoline of her father and setting him on father after he had beaten her mother several times.  His face permanently scarred, the two meet again at the end of the film trying to kill each other.

The same two main characters are present, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), journalist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace).  This time around, it is Mikael who helps out Lisbeth and the film has twice the presence of Lisbeth compared to the first. Lisbeth is the more intriguing of the two characters but in the first seeing less of her makes the audience cheer whenever she is on screen.

The edginess of the first is clearly missing.  Anything can happen and does in the first – like the sex scene between Mikael and Lisbeth (missing here); the revenge sex scene with the dildo kicked into Lisbeth’s guardian’s ***censored***; the sexually abusive villain.  Shots of good scenes are flashed back in the second, which reminds the audience of what is absent.  The best part of THE GIRL WITH WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is the fight scene between the blond muscle man and the boxer.  The blond muscle man is described as inhuman and in a way is, as the man has a defect affecting his nerve endings so that he does not feel any pain.

The story is still interesting enough to provide audience satisfaction and brings the film to a logical conclusion.  Still, THE GIRL WITH WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is worth the price of the ticket.  It would be interesting to contemplate what the third film of the trilogy is going to be like.