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The three films share two different directors and four different screenwriters, but all feel as if they rolled off the same solid sturdy movie assembly line. This isn’t meant as a criticism so much as an acknowledgment on my part that picking one part as better than the others feels like a zero-sum game. What tilts The Girl Who Played With Fire upwards in my affections is director Daniel Alfredson’s skill with the many action set pieces.

The tour de force of the film doesn’t even feature the two leads. It’s a bare-knuckle brawl between a blond-domed henchman impervious to pain and Lisbeth’s kickboxing trainer (played by real-life Swedish welterweight Paolo Roberto apparently playing himself) who is attempting to save Lisbeth’s part-time lover from being gutted. The blows go on for several minutes allowing the sense of fatigue on Alberto’s part to sink in. Not knowing the plots from the books, and not having the benefit of “star names” in roles to guess as to who might live or not, I found myself more emotionally and viscerally invested in this action scene and others.

That barnyard knockdown is matched with the “family reunion” of sorts that closes the film, showing that if Salander is tough enough to take a bullet to the head and crawl back out of her own grave, she’d better expect her old man to be equally tenacious. I have not seen Noomi Rapace in any other roles, but as she now appears to be heading towards Hollywood-ization with the Sherlock Holmes sequel and Ridley Scott’s upcoming sci-fi film, I hope she maintains the edge that she displays in these films with her upcoming role. It would be a welcome blast of vitriol.

And now, I guess I have some reading to do...

Next time: I head back to Netflix streaming once again to catch up with another acclaimed crime trilogy of the last few years.

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