Review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009) by Lorenzo V — 29 May 2011

"Lisbeth Salander has her own very confused perception of the world.".

Lisbeth is recovering in a hospital and awaiting trial for three murders when she is released. Mikael must prove her innocence, but Lisbeth must be willing to share the details of her sordid experiences with the court.

REVIEW.

As well as The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest might not be as good as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but it definitely is a very good movie on its own merit, and it surely deserves a recommendation, with the warning that it will be incomprehensible if you have not seen the two previous movies. In summary, I think that The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is a very satisfactory conclusion of the trilogy.

Even though some people might think that concluding the trilogy with a sober legal thriller is anti-climatic, the movie kept me very interested the whole time. Most of the movie might be developed in rooms, cells and offices, but that did not avoid director Daniel Alfredson from keeping a dynamic rhythm. Besides, the screenplay shows a good dominion over its considerable number of characters, and it never falls into improbable tangles or absurd extremes of melodrama.

Two complains I have against this movie is that there are a few scenes which feel a bit irrelevant; and that the story is so complex that it occasionally saturated me of information, because as it plunges us into investigations, conspiracies and intrigues, we find more and more names, places and relationships, and I felt myself slightly lost in a few occasions for not recognizing a complicated Swedish name, or the face of someone I had already seen. Sure, that could be a problem more from my brain than from the movie. Besides, I understand that, since it is the adaptation of a book, we can be sure that there will be a certain level of condensation of the story in order to keep the movie's running time on a reasonable level. And I think that the final result was pretty good, because the film kept me very entertained and interested.

As for the cast, our old acquaintances Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace bring perfect performances in the leading roles once more, and I also liked the work from Lena Endre, Annika Hallin, Anders Ahlborn, Jacob Ericksson and specially Micke Spreitz. However, the story is the film's main star, and despite not being an excellent film, I liked The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest pretty much, even though I felt some melancholy when it ended for knowing that the late author Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) will not write anymore about the adventures from the characters Lisbeth Salander and Michael Blomkvist.