Picking up the story one year after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this tightly-focused adaptation of the second part of Stieg Larsson’s crime trilogy plunges us straight into a multi-layered detective story. Radical journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) is back at Millennium magazine; bisexual uber-nerd Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is living incognito back in Sweden. Without meeting, they conduct parallel investigations into a double murder linked to the trafficking of East European sex workers, for which Lisbeth has been framed by lawyer/rapist Nils Bjurman. The chief suspect is a gangster known only as ‘Zala’, there are more shocking revelations about Lisbeth’s bleak past, and the later scenes slip into horror movie territory. There’s a blond giant who feels no pain, burial alive and gory scenes of axe-wielding revenge. With David Fincher’s Hollywood re-make of Dragon Tattoo already in the works, now is the time to (re-)enter the dark, disturbing world of Larsson’s imagination. (Notes by Nigel Floyd).