The Girl Who Played with Fire
Note: this is the sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Repace) wakes up after having a violent dream about being raped by her guardian, Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson) (from the previous movie). She is currently living in St. George in the Caribbean and then goes to a meeting with her accountant who discusses the inheritance Lisbeth received from her recently deceased mother after funeral costs and the purchase of a house in Stockholm. She hacks Bjurman's account and sees he has scheduled a doctors appointment. She flies home to Sweden.
In Stockholm, a messenger working for an unnamed employer visits Bjurman looking for a police report on Lisbeth. He tells her he will make a copy of his files and tells the messenger that Lisbeth is still abroad. The messenger drives him home and tells Bjurman he will be in touch. Lisbeth is watching from the trees and prepares to break into his house. As he sleeps, Lisbeth goes to his desk and looks for something. She finds a gun in his desk and points it at him asking about the files. She tells him that as long as his reports say she's well behaved, she won't send their movie (of Bjurman raping her) to every newspaper in the country. She makes it clear that if she dies, the tape gets released. And if he tries to remove the tattoos she gave him for the rape, she will give him worse ones.
Bjurman makes a deal: the DVD recording of the rape for files on her. Lisbeth goes to her new apartment and starts work on it.
Meanwhile, reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is at meeting with a co-owner of Millenium and part time lover, Erika Berger (Lena Endre). She asks about Lisbeth but Blomkvist claims that he hasn't heard from her in over a year. He learns that a new journalist, named Dag Svensson, has been hired to write a piece on human sex trafficking. Dag's girlfriend, Mia, helps him come up with the subject through her work as a researcher on gender and criminology. Mia focuses on the girls and Dag focuses on customers. He has traced it to members of the government. He hasn't confronted the people the expose is on. Blomkvist warns him that they need to check facts and Dag assures him the documentation is water-proof. The editors are all in agreement and decide to take Dag on for two months. They are taking a risk but they all agree it's worth it.
A man named Sandstrom is having sex with a woman tied to a bed. He walks out and finds himself surrounded by three men in leather jackets who have a job for him.
Lisbeth visits her sometimes-girlfriend, Miriam 'Mimmi' Wu (whom was glimpsed briefly in the previous movie as the girl in bed with Lisbeth when Blomkvist met her for the first time). They talk and Lisbeth gives Mimmi her apartment to stay in. The two of them have lesbian sex. Afterwards Mimmi gives Lisbeth a birthday present: a silver plated cigarette case.
A few days later, Dag meets up with Mia for coffee. She presents him with a published copy of her sex trafficking doctorate and he kisses her. He reads it and calls Blomkvist while he is at a family picnic with his sister. He wants to hold off publishing the story until he hunts down a lead named Zala that Mia refers to as Anton in her doctorate. Blomkvist doesnt want to incorporate new leads at the last minute but Dag offers to messenger the information to him. Blomkvist tells him he'll be right over and drives to meet him.
When Blomkvist arrives he finds Dag and Mia dead. Both shot through the head. He calls the police and they find a weapon registered to Bjurman. The police go to his apartment and find the gun... along with Bjurman's body. The police find Lisbeth's fingerprints on the weapon and immediately make her suspect number one.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth visits her former employer Dragan Armanskij at Merrin Security. He offers her a job but Lisbeth tells him that she's been travelling. She tells him that she doesn't know why she didn't say goodbye but Armanskij tells her that she doesn't really care about people at all. He tells her that Blomkvist has been calling the office and asking for her. Her former guardian, Holger Palmgren, has also been calling and Lisbeth is shocked to learn he is alive.
Lisbeth visits Palmgren at the hospice where he is recovering and feeds him. He asks her how things are with the new guardian and she assures him that he's O.K. He tells her he feels like he has got old and silly. They joke around.
The next day, Lisbeth sees the wanted posters of her and hides out in her new fancy apartment that nobody knows about, which she purchased with her stolen money (which she aquired in the Wennerstrm affair in the previous movie) and lists it under the shell corporation called Wasp Enterprises. She hacks into Blomkvist's computer and sends him a message to let him know that she is innocent. She urges him to find a man named 'Zala'. Blomkvist works to locate Lisbeth but only manages to find her former boxing trainer, Paulo.
Lisbeth and Blomkvist track down their own leads to try and find Zala. As Blomkvist tracks down Dag's informants to confront them, Lisbeth hunts down Sandstrom at his house and threatens to kill him if he doesn't help her. He tells her that Zala makes sure all members are loyal and recounts a tale of how Niedermann and his men killed a man in front of him snapping his neck to teach Sandstrom a lesson. Lisbeth hears Sandstrom's daughter enter and leaves Sandstrom weeping with a noose around his neck.
Paulo offers to pay Lisbeth's girlfriend and visit to help Blomkvist find Lisbeth. He goes to find Mimmi only to find her being strong armed into a car by a blonde thug named Niedermann. He follows Niedermann's car to the countryside and finds them in a barn. Niedermann is brutally beating Mimmi asking for Lisbeth's location. Paulo fights Niedermann to protect Mimmi. The two duke it out but Paulo's hits don't really do anything. Niedermann knocks Paulo out. Niedermann sets the barn on fire leaving the two to die. Paulo and Mimmi barely make it out alive.
Lisbeth hears about Mimmi's attack and pays her a visit in the hospital. She apologizes to Mimmi and leaves but leaves her new apartment keys behind. Blomkvist visits Mimmi and she gives him the keys so that he can get into Lisbeth's apartment. Mimmi tells Blomkvist that the man who beat her was large and blonde, confirming a police sketch and then allows Blomkvist to leave. He goes straight to Lisbeth's apartment and sets off the alarm. Lisbeth remotely deactivates it and allows him to enter.
Lisbeth watches Niedermann's post office box and sees who goes to collect the mail. She follows him to a small house in the rural village of Gossberga, several miles to the southwest of Stockholm. She prepares to sneak into the house, but is knocked out by Niedermann.
Meanwhile, Blomkvist looks through Lisbeth's apartment but realizes she isn't there. He checks her laptop computer that she left behind and watches the video of Bjurman raping Lisbeth. He leaves the apartment and goes to the Millenium office where he meets up with Paulo. Paulo tells him about the fight with Niedermann and points out his conclusion: Niedermann is incapable of feeling pain. They research Niedermann and find out he works for a company owned by Karl Boden. They forward what they find to the police and go to find Lisbeth.
When Lisbeth comes to, she is sitting on a sofa in front of a horribly disfigured old man. It is Zalachenko, Lisbeth's father. It is explained that Lisbeth set Zalachenko on fire when he beat her mother. He ridicules her rape at the hands of Bjurman and mocks Lisbeth's mother, calling her a common whore. Bjurman wanted to kill Lisbeth but he also knew some of Zalachenko's secrets, so he had Bjurman killed and Lisbeth framed for the murder as well as the two other killings of Dag and Mia. Since he's nothing but a poor old invalid, no one will prosecute him for the crimes committed. He then reveals that Niedermann is Lisbeth's half brother from a tryst he had with a Swedish woman while hiding out in netural Sweden after World War II.
Niedermann and Zalachenko take her to a shallow grave. She tells him that the police will be on their way and that everything he said in the last hour has been published online. He takes her cell phone and looks at it and calls it a bluff. Lisbeth throws dirt in Niedermann's eyes and hits his gun hand with the shovel before running away. Zalachenko shoots Lisebeth in her right leg, then her right shoulder, and in the head as she runs away and then orders Niedermann to bury Lisbeth who is probally dead. They return to the house after burying her.
The next morning, Blomkvist is looking at a map on the side of the road and changes course, realizing he is going the wrong way.
Meanwhile, at the farm, Lisbeth (despite being critcially wounded with a bullet in her head) digs her way out of her own grave using the silver cigarette case Mimmi gave her. Zalachenko picks up a gun when he hears a noise outside and goes to see what is going on in his barn. He finds the door open and looks around for the source. As he looks around he is hit in the side of the head with an axe, splitting his skull. Lisbeth than rams the axe into his leg. Niedermann hears his father's screams and goes to find him. He sees his father with an axe in his leg and then sees Lisbeth with Zalachenko's gun in her hand. Niedermann turns and runs as Lisbeth shoots at him, missing each time.
Blomkvist pulls into the house and sees Niedermann leaving the scene. Blomkvist runs to the bloodied Lisbeth who crawls out of the barn and collapses. He caresses the wound on her head and tells her that he's here for her. She passes out from blood loss.
Police arrive at the scene as do ambulances. A helicopter arrives to med-evac Lisbeth and Zalachenko to the hospital. Blomkvist watches as she is taken away. The helicopter flies the injured away from the farm house.
