Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Luftslottet som sprängdes; crime drama, Sweden, 2009; D: Daniel Alfredson, S: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Tehilla Blad, Lena Endre

Stockholm. Lisbeth recovered in the hospital after the previous incidents, but is indicted for attempted murder against her father, ex-Soviet spy Zalachenko who switched to work for the Swedish Security Police. This Security Police kills him in order to hush up the long suppressed affair where they covered him abusing his wife for decades, and in order to do so they also confined Lisbeth who stood up against the abuse by sending her to a mental asylum. Despite numerous staged attacks, with the help of reporter Mikael, Lisbeth is acquitted of all charges, released, while her ex-asylum keeper Teleborian is arrested for child pornography.

The final contribution to the 'Millenium' trilogy, part III is arguably the weakest of the three Swedish movie adaptation of Steig Larsson's popular novels, not managing to catch up the level of awe and suspense of the first two films, yet it still managed to give a satisfying conclusion to the story that more or less circled out the events by setting them in a bigger, thought-provoking context: Lisbeth turns out to be the victim of the cover-up by the Security Police, by which the author poses some big questions about his society where the rights of an individual can be squashed just to protect anyone who works for the national security of the Swedish nation. Noomi Rapace, despite less great material to work with in this film, still shines as the nonconforming wild girl Lisbeth, though, just like in the previous film, it is a pity that she avoids Mikael throughout the whole film, until the end when they finally meet, since it was shown they had some great chemistry in the first edition. The story of the trilogy is engaging, though not that deep or groundbreaking as some would like to put it, yet it gains definite plus points by allowing characters to develop from film to film, which is why the original film might actually seem  even better and multi-layered after the viewers see it again after seeing all three films and getting the bigger picture.

Grade:++

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