This movie started to play in Indonesian theaters on Friday, however it did not play in any of the cinemas easily accessible from my office or my home then. So my wife and I decided to just wait till the weekend to see it, together with another movie that premiered on Wednesday but we did not see due to same reasons. Anyway, as this film was a sequel and my wife had not seen the first movie, she watched it through online streaming the night before. Well let's get on with the first of our movie marathon.
Brief Story Line
Set few years after the original movie, Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy - First Man etc) now became a vigilante who sometimes protected and helped abused women. She was requested by Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant - Logan etc) to steal a dangerous program called Firefall from NSA, which prompted special agent Needham (Lakeith Stanfield - Sorry to Bother You, Atlanta TV series etc) to pursue and capture her in Stockholm.
Meanwhile because of this program, Lisbeth also became the target of a dangerous organization called The Spiders led by Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks - Blade Runner 2049 etc). The Swedish police were also hot on her tail. With so many people pursuing her, Lisbeth turned to her old friend/former lover Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason - Borg Vs McEnroe etc) for help.
So could Lisbeth escape from all those people trying to capture her and could she ensure the safety of the people she tried to protect? Find them all in this cool action thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As usual when seeing a sequel, I would definitely be tempted to compare with the first movie (titled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). This time, I was a bit surprised to see the different tone of this film. The first movie was a slow burner, a movie with mystery to solve with a bit of danger and very little action. But this sequel was a movie which seemed like focusing more on the action. There was no major mystery to solve. My wife even said that there was a sense of Agatha Christie style in the first movie due to the mystery solving part, but there was no such feeling in here.
The first movie also felt more like an introduction to the characters with some of them played by established actors and actresses such as Daniel Craig as Mikael, Robin Wright as Erika Berger, plus Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård as supporting cast. The lead character Lisbeth was played by Rooney Mara who received Academy Awards nomination for her role in that movie. Meanwhile in this sequel, all of the original characters were played by completely different cast whom we might not be too familiar. For me personally, a complete change in cast usually would take a bit of getting used to. But because this was not a TV series and there was only 1 movie earlier, it was not too bothersome. Probably the only one I missed was the appearance of Daniel Craig as his performance in the first movie left a good impression, while in here, the character Mikael felt like just a supporting person rather than the male lead.
Since the movie was focusing more on the action part, I gotta say that it was pretty entertaining. The action sequence were actually very well made, and Claire Foy was quite awesome in those fight scenes. Her characterization as this unique person was also quite convincing, not only because of her "weird" appearance but also the way she talked or behave. And in this sequel, we also got to know a bit better on Lisbeth's character as we were shown something relating to her past. The special effects (explosion, car chase and gunshooting scenes) were very nicely done. Too bad that the cinema where we saw the movie was having a rather dark screen, but the sound effects were wonderful with several times the shooting sound were very realistic.
Of all the nice things I could say about the movie, there was one thing that really bothered me which I considered as a plot hole. I would share that plot hole at the very bottom of my review which should only be read if you have seen the movie, otherwise it would be a major spoiler. Aside from those, the change of tone from a mystery solving to a more action movie might be disappointing for fans of such genre. Making the movie to be more action-ish might be good to attract the more casual movie audience, but those looking for the psychological thriller movie with deep conversation, wonderful scenario writing and the thrill of finding who did it, might not be too receptive. Personally though, for me I am still OK with it and was able to enjoy it nonetheless.
Those who did not know, this movie was based on the novel of the same title written by David Lagercrantz who continued the work of the late Stieg Larsson who wrote the previous 3 novels with same characters (but only The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that was adapted to a Hollywood English speaking movie while the others including this one, also had Swedish language adaptation in movies & TV series). Probably it was due to the different person writing the novel that the story had a different tone and also translated into different style of movie.
Overall, this was a movie that might appeal to casual audience looking for an action movie with a bit of mystery. The appearance of Claire Foy as a new "super" heroine should also satisfy those who want to see female lead in action film. However, those looking for the same type of the original movie should be ready for an entirely different type of movie with less mystery and little surprise and might be disappointed by the plot hole (if you happen to notice it like I did). Oh another thing that I also noticed was the duration of the movie playing in Indonesia only 115 minutes, while according to the largest movie database website, it should have 117 minutes. So there was 2 minutes cut by Indonesian censorship body. But somehow I could not find out in which part they were cut. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene in the film.
So if you are interested in watching this, my recommendation would be to see in the studio with better & brighter screens, to enjoy the movie better.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Spoiler Alert!!! on the Plot Hole
Plot hole I mentioned above was when Lisbeth trying to protect Balder from the Russian goon, and he decided to kill Balder by framing Lisbeth, while kidnapping Balder's young son August. There was nothing earlier that gave any hint that the program could be opened by August, which meant it became very illogical for the bad guy to kill Balder in the first place. It certainly made the whole kidnapping August part became very weird. They should have brought Balder first and probably use August to threaten him to open the access to the program. Unless I missed that whole part where The Spiders had the knowledge of August' capability to open the program, I thought this was a really disturbing plot hole.
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