Girl who played with fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire (right poster) and The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest (left) were the second and third titles of thrillers written by Stieg Larsson. They comprise a publishing phenomenon, the Millennium trilogy, that has sold millions of copies globally. A few years after their appearance and the sudden death of their Swedish author, they were adapted for the cinema. The first volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was Sweden's biggest-ever box-office winner and the most successful European film of 2009.

Swedish TV's Daniel Alfredson directed both of them; Denmark's Niels Anders Oprev directed the first episode (the screenplay for which was written by two Danish adaptors). Sweden's Jonas Frykberg adapted the second and third books. Availability of production funds and/or facilities may account for the movie trilogy's twin nationality.

Michael Nykvist and Noomi Rapace continued their starring roles as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. In the second thriller, they're solving gruesome deaths again, this time involving international trafficking of women, and Lisbeth is suspected of multiple murder too. In the third, the pair of unconventional sleuths clear Lisbeth's name and she wreaks revenge on the evil men in her harsh life.

Something went amiss with the production of the two "Swedish" adaptations, which were surely filmed simultaneously. The murky old-fashioned film quality lacks the digital brightness of the first film, several exterior scenes were shot on poorly-lit or rainy days, and the pauses to show the lead actors' facial reactions don't have the same depth as before. These two adaptations look more like TV productions.

The second movie introduces the cast of bizarre characters associated with Lisbeth's Russian father; it's a compact 2-hour murder mystery and criminal freak show. The third and final installment adds 20 minutes more in its doomed effort to accommodate most of Larsson's vast line-up of bit parts - evil secret agents, vengeful motor bikers, the Millennium magazine's team, prosecutors and policemen, secret service investigators and psychiatric hospital staff. It was a mission truly impossible for any adaptor.

It's made a harder visual challenge because the only non-typical Swedes on view are a gratuitous Jewish police inspector and a Turko-something auto-hire manager. There is one typically over-populated and confusing scene near the end when the government's secret investigators assemble in one room in five or more big teams, their presence only being necessary in the screenplay to explain how all the baddies can be swept up individually at the end.

Lisbeth, supposedly now 28, looks closer to the real age of her actress, and her relative lack of dialogue until the final courtroom showdown illustrates her character's silent truculence, a character flaw that was under-stated in the first installment.

Maybe the third volume needed a 4-hour two-parter. Maybe the Larsson trilogy's far-fetched plot devices and coincidences can only gain credibility inside a reader's imagination.