The action takes place one year after crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has seen Lisbeth. Having successfully vindicated himself after a prison sentence for libel by proving the case against a gun-runner, he is now in pursuit of a story of sex slavery. Hookers, some underage, are being transported from Eastern Europe and Thailand into Sweden. When a fellow journalist pursuing the story is found murdered, Lisbeth is suspected since her prints are on the gun, which prompts Mikael, apparently Lisbeth’s only friend, to prove her innocence by exposing the real killers. We learn more about Mikael than we did during the first episode. He has a sexual relationship with Erika, a fellow journalist and must live with the accusation by police agents that he is nothing but an amateur gumshoe who should leave the cop stuff to those trained for the profession. Daniel Alfredson’s direction is more straightforward than Niels Arden Oplev’s: not so many extreme close-ups nor does Alfredson do as much to show Sweden as a place that foreign tourists might like to visit. We’re told to wait until mid-October for a celluloid adaptation of the third episode, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest,” at which point we may learn what gave Lisbeth the idea for that tattoo provided that she survives the torment that she faced in this second installment." - Harvey Karten.