The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (15)
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Sad to say that the Millennium trilogy, adapted from the Stieg Larsson novels, has become more ponderous and less compelling with each instalment.
This final part picks up directly from the previous, with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) recovering from a life-threatening assault by her hated sadist father and mute half-brother. She now faces trial for attempted murder, while crusading journo Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) hunts down evidence of systematic abuse that will exonerate her. The guilt appears to lie with a cabal of old men who conspired in Lisbeth's incarceration and torture, though the film unfolds this in such a stolid fashion you might wonder if it's a thriller at all. The expansive length has also highlighted real weaknesses of character and detail: the Millennium magazine, for example, now looks an absurd throwback, with writers bagging themselves "40 pages" each for their big whistleblowing issue, computers are serendipitously hacked for vital clues, and the half-brother's serial killing is forgotten about for long stretches. Yet, while much of it trundles along, one must credit Noomi Rapace for holding the centre as the implacable heroine, that basilisk stare underscoring her lengthy silences. It's been rather a mixed journey from dragon tattoo to hornet's nest.
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