The second installment of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is intense and engaging, but lacks the grip and originality of the first film in the series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). At parts this film actually feels more like a made-for-TV flick. Missing most is the wonderful and intriguing interaction between the two main characters of the first installment – the bizarre and extreme Lisbeth Salander: part hacker, part Sherlock Holmes, part Jason Bourne... and Larsson’s alter ego, the brave Millennium magazine journalist Mikael Blomkvist, both still wonderfully played by Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. In terms of plot, some characters are reintroduced from the first part while other characters are brought forth from the past. It is a worthy film but given it is part of a series, it is not up to par with the standards set for the trilogy in the first installment.