The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest [Luftslottet Som Sprängdes] (**)
Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Noomi
Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Micke Spreitz, Anders Ahlbom, Jacob
Ericksson, Sofia Ledarp, Mirja Turestedt, Niklas Hjulström
Seen:
December 10th 2010
**
Out of ****
A series that kicked of as gritty and in-your-face and truly immersive
with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo deserves better than ending on this note.
In it’s defence however, Stieg Larsson was apparently planning on writing 7
books in the series, but his untimely death limited it to the Millennium
trilogy we have now. I have not read the books and do not know whether much was
changed to reach such a clean ending in this movie, even setting aside the fact
that this ending is such a non-event. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest has
very little going for itself apart from two strong leading characters as
established in the previous two movies, one of them is even rationed on screen
time, as Lisbeth Salander (Rapace) gets the majority (which is understandable,
as she is the main character).
The movie starts of with promise, the final scenes of the previous
movie, The Girl Who Played with Fire, spliced with the first scenes of this
movie, Lisbeth being rushed to hospital and into surgery. This I thought was a
deft hand at work. Then the movie turns to a group, The Section, as special
police forces dub them, and their scheming to get rid of Zala and Lisbeth
before they are exposed, while Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) is still doing all he can to
assist Lisbeth’s case. The Section consists of a bunch of old men with more
power and influence than they should rightfully have. Lisbeth spends the first
half of the movie under ‘hospital-arrest’, and she’s closely guarded while recovering
from her grievous wounds suffered at the hands of her father and half brother.
Her doctor tries to protect her to some degree, keeping lawyers and police away
from her while in hospital, and while recovering, Lisbeth writes her
autobiography on her phone, which the doctor sneaks in for her.
Dr
Peter Teleborian (Ahlbom), Lisbeth’s psychiatrist during her wrongfully
committed teenage years, and member of The Section, does his best to get
evidence lined up in such a way that Lisbeth can be permanently committed.
Lisbeth does have a secret weapon up her sleeve though: the video of Bjurman
raping her, which is mentioned early on in the movie and the viewer just knows,
from that second (in fact, from far earlier, the first movie), that this will
be their trump card in getting Lisbeth acquitted. The only exciting scene in
the movie happens after everything has come to a conclusion and the viewer
wonders, for a second, what about that big blond giant without pain receptors?
Niedermann (Spreitz) senselessly kills a few police officers and a homeless man
early on during the movie, but until the last scene he is largely anonymous in
proceedings. It’s only when Lisbeth investigates her inheritance (which she
would just as soon rescind), that one last meeting occurs, and even this is too
little too late in an unsatisfactory end to a trilogy that started of with a
bang.
I
can’t wait to see what David Fincher is going to do with an American version of
this series starring Rooney Mara as Lisbeth and Daniel Craig as Mikael, slated
for release in December of 2011. I just hope he can find a more satisfying
conclusion for this trilogy, and judging by his previous efforts, I’ll venture
that that’s almost a certainty.
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