The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
The cinematic version of the Millennium trilogy, sired by the late Stieg Larsson’s literary hit, is sort of like a bus rolling backwards. It’s bumpy, awkward, uncomfortable, irritating, and quite tiresome. Oh yeah, and it’s moving in the wrong direction. Having now seen the concluding chapter, flashily titled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (the original Swedish title actually translates as The Air Castle That Was Blown Up, which is an absolutely hilarious and somewhat awesome title), I can finally see the nonsensical trajectory of this trilogy and how each step forward in the narrative seems to signal a step back in creativity.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is easily the most boring and dramatically inept entry in this series, a distinction that is almost impressive, considering that the previous movie was a veritable celebration of tedium. This final flick in the trilogy picks up soon after the events of the second movie, with titular heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) being rushed to the hospital following a violent run-in with her evil, melted-face father (Georgi Staykov) and her expressionless half-brother (Micke Spreitz), who has more in common with a kitchen counter than his partial sibling.
From there, the narrative devolves into a series of increasingly uninspired plot threads that basically add up to Lisbeth being charged with attempted murder. This all leads to some courtroom drama (minus the drama, for the most part) and more blank stares from crusading journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) and blah blah… zzzzzzz. Oh sorry, I passed out for a moment there. A fitting reaction, since this series is about as effective at keeping me awake as a bubble bath laced with sleeping pills. It’s about as exciting as that, too.
Just like with the last movie (and even the first movie to some degree), this third and (thank goodness) final entry in the series is marred by a completely splintered narrative that steals far too much screen time from the captivating Rapace. It’s utterly ridiculous how much of this movie ignores her, even though she’s the only actor in the sprawling 148-minute running time who manages to impress with apparent ease. Even after struggling to get through the plodding, frustrating chunk of the movie that leaves Lisbeth as a background fixture, I found myself suddenly entertained when Rapace later opened her mouth and started speaking.
She really is a compelling screen presence with an astonishing ability to command our attention and she sets the movie ablaze when she’s given the opportunity to perform. But she’s surrounded by rubbish, both in the plot (a conspiracy involving a shadowy group is especially laughable) and in her castmates (Nyqvist is officially one of the most boring people I’ve ever watched on a screen). Rapace is drowning in dreck before the movie even begins and she’s never given a fair chance to rescue the movie.
Even though her character spends a big portion of the movie either recovering in a hospital room or waiting in a holding cell before making her court appearance, I would still have preferred to spend those hours with Lisbeth, as opposed to watching the elderly members of the shadowy group have secret conversations or Mikael stare at a computer screen. There are even several moments where we catch a glimpse of Lisbeth’s hulking half-brother stealing cars and beating people up, the purpose of these scenes being to simply remind us that he’s still around. Uh, thanks for that. I love somewhat random asides in already boring movies.
Director Daniel Alfredson certainly hasn’t learned anything new about narrative pacing since the last movie. How a movie with a star as electrifying as Rapace ends up being so preposterously plodding is a bit of a mystery, but it’s safe to say that the answer lies in the work of nearly everyone who isn’t Noomi Rapace. There is a fun and effective moment in the latter half of the movie where Lisbeth, having been instructed by her lawyer to dress in common clothing for the purposes of fabricating an accessible image, enters the courtroom sporting a huge mohawk and a million piercings. It’s a reminder of how interesting and unique a heroine Lisbeth is, which also serves to further expose how underused she is in this movie (in the whole series, really).
As is usually the case with a final chapter in a series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest spends its last few minutes wrapping up plot threads and tying everything together. This means we finally get to spend a couple, almost uninterrupted minutes with Lisbeth, which is nice, but it also means that the movie concludes on the most predictable note possible. That makes sense, really, given that this series has routinely played it safe and buried much of the potential made possible by Rapace’s performance. I’d hate for this movie to go against the grain and end on a unique note, since that would be, well, unexpected.
With its fully metaphorical title in tow, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest collapses with a curtain call of little consequence. It takes its sweet time before arriving at the final credits crawl, but it eventually gets there in tardy fashion. This version of the series has finally come to a close and it’s getting little more than a muttered “good riddance” from me. I am very excited to see Noomi Rapace continue to light up the screen, but I’m hoping she gets to anchor a movie with no dreary male leads like Nyqvist in sight. As for this Girl and her Kicked Hornet’s Nest, I feel it’s appropriate to say, in morose metaphorical mode, stop this damn backwards-rolling bus. You passed my stop a while ago. I’m ready to get off this rickety ride and not look back.
