The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes, 2009)

[randy_byers]

Eh. This is the concluding movie in the adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, about a tormented goth girl genius and the ugly underbelly of Swedish society. It wraps the story up, but it's by the numbers. We find out who was responsible for Lisbeth Salander's mistreatment as a child and young adult, and why they did it. As hinted previously, it's a right wing conspiracy, but a strangely toothless one. Despite a couple of interesting characters and a few good scenes, there wasn't much drama or suspense to it. Good defeats evil, yay! Probably the most interesting thing about it continued to be Lisbeth's inability to relate to other human beings, but even that felt a bit rote here. On some level this chapter is about her dependence on others to help her despite her inability to trust or understand anyone, but it never really explores the dimensions of that.

Still worth seeing as the conclusion of the story, but kind of a damp squib in its own right.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the denouement in the trial and the performance by Blomkvist's sister lacks something in translation to the screen. We're going to see it on Sunday.

I suspect a lot of nuance wasn't just lost in the translation to the screen but also from Swedish to English.

I read most of it on the plane back from PV and I laughed outloud at the performance of the baddies in spaces. I think Larsson was making some points about his opinion of the Swedish Security forces - even though, at the end of the day, they're actually heroes.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Well, "Millennium" wasn't planned to be a trilogy. Larrson just died before he could write more installments.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Is this out?? Bleeding hell -\not here yet..