Stars: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Peter

129 mins

★★★

THE first thing to be said about The Girl Who Played With Fire is that it’s not as good as the first one, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That would be difficult as the movie of the opening book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy was a superior piece of film-making that gripped from start to finish.

The story continues of Lisabeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the ace computer hacker with the tattoos and piercings that make her stand out from the crowd.

Further glimpses into her horrific past are seen when she discovers her guardian Bjurman (Andersson) is breaking the conditions of their “arrangement”. So she returns to Sweden, only to find herself the prime suspect when he’s found murdered and two others are shot down – and her fingerprints are on the weapon.

Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) has returned to the Millennium magazine with the aim of exposing a billion dollar sex trafficking ring controlled by people who ought to know better as they’re in positions of authority within the government.

The problem is that this odd couple, Mikael and The Girl, are kept apart for most of the two hour film as they follow up two separate strands of a story that eventually, of course, meet up.

This feels a bit boring and a bit too much like many other thrillers. It works best when the remarkable Rapace is on screen as the troubled but compelling .