Year 13, Day 29 - 1/29/21 - Movie #3,731
BEFORE: Noomi Rapace carries over from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", and so do a bunch of other actors - it seems that once these Swedish directors get an ensemble together that they like, they try to keep that cast intact. All three of these "Millennium Trilogy" films have 2009 release dates, so I think they pretty much cranked them out, back-to-back. Guess there was a market for them and they didn't want to wait - in Hollywood it's usually at least two or three years between a film and its sequel.
A rare Birthday SHOUT-OUT today to actor Per Oscarsson - actually, it was yesterday, 1/28, but since I started watching this one late on Thursday night but counting it as my Friday movie, I'm taking the birthday tie-in where I can. I don't think he'll mind, since he died back in 2010 - he'd been in a ton of Swedish movies going back to the 1940's, co-starred with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, I'm just surprised was never in an Ingmar Bergman film.
THE PLOT: As computer hacker Lisbeth and journalist Mikael investigate a sex-trafficking ring, Lisbeth is accused of three murders, causing her to go on the run while Mikael works to clear her name.
AFTER: Well, I guess I can see why Hollywood never made a movie out of the second book in the trilogy, it's just not as interesting. The first movie had the missing woman, the serial killer investigation, Nazis, and lots of sex (both consensual and, umm, not so much). What does this one have, by comparison? OK, a couple murders, but the big magazine story is about a sex-trafficking ring, and it's all after-the-fact reporting work. BO-RING! And the first film had two concurrently-running stories that dovetailed together, here the two main storylines barely intersect, and honestly, they only intersect because they both have Lisbeth in them - that almost feels like cheating.
The main heavy from one story does kill two reporters working on the magazine investigation, but that's a tenuous link, also. He's only doing that to frame Lisbeth for the killings, what a cheap way to try to tie everything together. It feels really forced. Before dying, one of those reporters drops the name "Zala" as somebody who may be very important to his research, but that's a fake-out. "Zala" is important to the story, but not in the way that we're initially led to believe. It's very cheap the way they dropped that in there, making sure the audience notice it, because it's going to be important later...
LIsbeth moves back to Sweden, because her habit of taking over other people's computers reveals that her guardian has an appointment to have a tattoo removed, and that the tattoo she carved into his stomach to tell everyone that he's a "Sadist and a sexist pig". She ended up making enough money at the end of the first film that she can come and go as she pleases, set herself up in a new city, and buy two apartments so she can live in one and have her mail sent to the other one. She even lets Miriam, her girlfriend/part-time lover, live there for free - it almost seemed like she was using her friend as bait, putting her in danger in case anybody tried to track down Lisbeth, but this didn't seem very cool. What if somebody breaks in and kills Miriam, or shoots her through the window, not taking the time to see if they killed the right brunette woman?
Sure enough, Miriam gets kidnapped by a strong dude who has a rare medical condition, he can't feel any pain. So even though Miriam's kickboxing trainer, Paolo Roberto (played by ex-boxer Paolo Roberto) goes to rescue her, he can't defeat the strong man (Ronald). The best they can do is escape from the barn they were held in before it burns down. Meanwhile, Michael and Lisbeth communicate via e-mailed messages (or perhaps he just leaves messages on his own computer for her to hack) and even though he always seems to be one step behind her, he still manages to find her secret apartment and pick up her mail for her.
Lisbeth is off on the other side of Sweden, tracking the strongman by following the guy who's picking up HIS mail. (Lots of post office boxes in this one, seems to be a theme...) This leads her to the big boss, the one who framed her for the murders and then tried to have her killed. But it's just business to him, it's nothing personal - except of course, it's also very personal. And it all might have something to do with that flashback from her childhood...
I think part of the problem here is that the book this was based on is about 700 pages long, and the movie's just a bit over 2 hours long. Clearly some plot elements needed to be jettisoned, not just for length but the filmmakers needed to move on to production of the third film, in order to get it finished and released in the same calendar year. Maybe that's why the story seems a little rushed and perhaps even incomplete in some places. I don't even want to say one key plot element that could have been explained a little better, because I think that would give too much away.
Also starring Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Georgi Staykov, Sofia Ledarp, Yasmine Garbi, Annika Hallin, Tehilla Blad, Michalis Koutsogiannakis, Jacob Ericksson, Reuben Sallmander (all carrying over from "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), Per Oscarsson, Tanja Lorentzon, Paolo Roberto, Johan Kylen, Magnus Krepper, Ralph Carlsson, Micke Spreitz, Anders Ahlborn Rosendahl, Hans Christian Thulin, Jennie Silfverhjelm, Sunil Munshi, Niklas Hjulstrom, Ola Wahlström, Donald Högberg, David Druid, Daniel Gustavsson, Pelle Bolander, Thomas Lindblad, Dennis Önder.
RATING: 6 out of 10 WANTED posters
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