In this second film based on Larsson's Millennium trilogy, Mikael Blomkvist's journalistic protege and his activist girlfriend are delving into a sex-trafficking ring whose patrons who are highly placed in the political establishment. When the couple are brutally murdered, the gun found in their apartment has Lisbeth's fingerprints on it, and Lisbeth and Mikael embark on parallel manhunts. Mikael is simultaneously aided and obstructed by a shambling detective named Bublanski, while Lisbeth is drawn toward fresh dangers connected to a rotten, unresolved past. The film captures both the beautiful, lugubrious Swedish landscape and the existential mood of contemporary northern Europe, trapped between the info-capitalist future and the ideological prisons of the past.