Set one year after the events of the first film, The Girl Who Played With Fire is another lean, muscular thriller that pulls no punches in its depictions of the violence and cruelty meted out to the morally conflicted characters.

Crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has not heard from computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) for a year.

He has ploughed his energy into Millennium magazine, edited by Erika Berger (Lena Endre), who is also his on-off lover, and together they are working on an explosive story about a sex trafficking ring with gossamer-thin ties to the upper echelons of power.

Days before publication, young writer Dag Svensson (Hans-Christian Thulin) and his girlfriend Mia are slain and the murder weapon is tracked back to corrupt lawyer Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson), who is Lisbeth’s guardian.

When police inspect the gun, they discover Lisbeth’s fingerprints.

However, Mikael refuses to believe that Lisbeth is capable of such an atrocity and he clashes with the cop.

Director Daniel Alfredson’s film is every bit as dark, brooding and unsettling as its predecessor, with scenes of gruesome and graphic violence that are never gratuitous.

The director doesn’t waste a single frame, concealing the twists in Larsson’s novel until the last minute for maximum impact.

A warning though: you'll need to have read the first book or seen the first film to have any idea what's going on.