Girl Who Played With Fire’ is more succinct, if not better, than the novel that inspired it

Let’s be frank. Stieg Larsson, who wrote obsessively readable novels, was no Tolstoy. Hell, he wasn’t even Steven King. The three books in his “Millennium” series are overwritten, filled with too many subplots/digressions and are filled with main plot points that depend too much on coincidence.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that the main male characters, the investigative journalist Blomkvist, is apparently irresistible to women — a kind of wish-fulfillment-fantasy that may work for readers of both genders but isn’t particularly believable.

OK, so what? I still enjoyed reading all three novels. Yet after seeing the Swedish version of the second novel, directed by Daniel Alfredson, I can see that the writer who adapted Larsson’s novel — the screenwriter Jonas Frykberg — did a pretty good job of cutting out all the dross and sticking to just the essentials that make the story flow.

And no matter what David Fincher is able to do with the U.S. version of the novels, no actress he casts as Salander can be half as good as Noomi Rapace (Rah-PAHS).

Just saying.