The second of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy is just as page-turnery and unputdownable as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, though it does stretch credibility to breaking point - or, more appropriately, shoot credibility in the brain then bury it in a shallow grave in the woods.
Unlike the previous book, the plot this time lands squarely on the doorstep of our titular, angry-goth-feminist-icon, heroine Lisbeth Salander when she's accused of murdering two reporters and her sleazy probation officer in a night of kill-crazy violence. Fortunately she has an excellent hiding place, plus the help of a veritable phone book of crack investigators - chiefly Millennium's publisher / Lisbeth's onetime lover Mikael Blomkvist. Also helping prove her innocence are her former employer, original probation office, boxing coach and Chinese girlfriend... even the police have Lisbeth sympathizers in their ranks, which is useful because the evidence against her is pretty condemning.
Oh, and there's also a secondary plotline about sex trafficking which seems to point towards some frightening figures from Lisbeth's past... who may or may not be untouchable in the eyes of the law.
Larsson's strength lies in his intricate plotting and eye for absorbing detail. He has the ability to write a chapter about nothing more than Lisbeth shopping for groceries or buying furniture from Ikea and make it as riveting as any murder investigation. His weakness is action sequences. Just as the showdown with Dragon Tattoo's serial killer felt slightly forced, the dramatic climax here will raise more than an eyebrow. It's melodrama and manipulation - undeniably thrilling, yet disappointing when compared to the rest of the book. That said, it's certainly not enough to discourage me from reading part 3, or cursing the cruel gods of fate who stole Larsson for us before he could write any more.
Ironically, the elements that work best in Larsson's books are the very things that don't transfer well to the cinema screen. Much of Lisbeth's investigative work involves hacking into secret computer files, while Blomkvist spends hours digging through dusty old reports in newspaper morgues. Exciting as that may be on the page, you'd be falling asleep in the cinema. So the Swedish filmmakers in charge of adapting Lisbeth's adventures to the big screen are faced with the task of not only streamlining Larsson's labyrinthine plot, but also ramping up the action. In doing so they sadly lose much of what makes the story work and render the plot bizarrely unintelligible for anyone who's not read the book. The first half of the novel is stripped down into the first 20 minutes of the movie and the large supporting cast is barely sketched compared to the fingerprint detail Larsson gives them on the page. What saves the second film - just, though not as much as the first one - is the central performances. Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist bring Lisbeth and Blomkvist to life with a grubby realism that Hollywood just won't be able to match. While I'm excited to see David Fincher helming the US remakes (though I breathed a sigh of relief when the laughable rumour of Scarlett Johansson as Lisbeth proved false) and I'm hoping he can transmit more of what makes Larsson's novels so gripping to the screen, you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be no flabby nude scenes or grimy Swedish streets on show... and somehow, that just won't be the same.
