My Writings
Review - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
Daniel Alfredson provides us with this adaptation of the third and final instalment of the Millennium trilogy, which began with the stunningly brilliant 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'. Steig Larsson, author and RIP, is conspicuous by his absence. Alfredson badly needed him as technical adviser, as, if we take this film entirely on its own merits, the conclusion must be that the motivation of most of the characters disappeared through the holes in the screenplay.
The best selling trilogy is actually two stories, because 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' and 'The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest' are two halves of the same story that progress in a linear timescale. This film begins where the second film left off, with Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) in intensive care after barely surviving her encounter with deranged family members, nasty thug Zala and giant henchman Neidermann. Mikel Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) is again planning to devote the entire resources of the Millennium magazine to helping Lisbeth prove her innocence, this time of attempted murder.
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The story is developed largely by introducing a raft of new characters until it becomes difficult to keep track of them all, and we begin to lose focus on exactly what it is Lisbeth and Blomqvist are trying to achieve, beyond getting Lisbeth out of a scrape. A dad's army of Swedish undercover veterans comprise a secret section, who are trying to prevent the truth about Zala (that he was a Soviet defector) from being compromised by the encounter with Lisbeth, which has left them both hospitalised.
Noomi Rapace is badly directed by Alfredson in this movie. She is an unsympathetic, surly and ungrateful character throughout, unable to co-operate with her own defense lawyer. She shows none of the skills which we admired her for in the first two movies, and has hardly any dialogue. As the movie progresses it becomes more and more difficult to empathise with her, or with those people who seem to want to move heaven and earth to protect her. When Zala is killed, it no longer makes any sense for the Millennium magazine to pursue the story of an attempted murder that would obviously be shown to be self defence, clumsily linked to the abuse Salander suffered when institutionalised, clumsily linked to the secret section who continued to try to protect Zala, even though he is by now dead and his Soviet secrets way beyond their sell by date.
As the movie progresses the plot becomes increasingly predictable. Salander has her showdown with Neidermann, but by now we have lost all connection with the girl with the dragon tattoo, and frankly no longer care which sibling gets out of the brickworks alive. Blomqvist seems to still care, but we have long since forgotten why, and so, by the looks of it, has Salander.
Rating : 3/10 Loses the plot completely
Review written by John Franklin : November 2010
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