Whoops.
I was really looking forward to seeing The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, not realizing that although I saw and loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I had somehow missed the second film in Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium Trilogy” – The Girl Who Played With Fire – when it played in theaters. For most people this won’t be a problem, since The Girl Who Played With Fire will be out on DVD by the time you’re reading this, but as I sat down in the theater the sudden realization swept over me that I might be hopelessly lost for the next two-and-a-half hours. Fortunately The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest is a bold and exciting piece of filmmaking on its own. It doesn’t stand on its own, and in fact completely depends on the events of the first two films, but director Daniel Alfredson (who also directed the second film in the trilogy) does a great job of making events clear even to people like me, who screwed up royal when they missed the last movie. But whatever: I saw The Empire Strikes Back before I ever saw A New Hope, and I loved it all the same. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest is an impressive film, and according to the a good friend – who actually saw the last movie and answered some of my questions over the course of the film – it works either way.
The events pick up immediately after The Girl Who Played With Fire. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) has been shot in the head, and both she and her father are en route to the emergency room. Her father, you see, has been working with a secret government faction which had Lisbeth committed after she tried to kill him by setting him on fire (“playing,” if you will). But now the secret’s out, the cops are on the trail of the conspiracy and investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Mikael Nyqvist) is desperately trying to save the day before Lisbeth can be killed or recommitted to an insane asylum under the care of the monstrous Dr. Teleborian (Anders Albohm Rosendahl). Meanwhile, Lisbeth’s half-brother Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz) is on a killing spree, on the run both from the police and to Lisbeth. He can’t feel pain, this monster, so an epic confrontation is inevitable.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest has a fascinating structure. Many films about a conspiracy end with that conspiracy revealed, and tack on a few scenes of courtroom drama to wrap things up in a neat little package. The third film in the “Millenium Trilogy” basically expands that denouement into a feature film, finding a compelling sequence of events where most stories start running out of story altogether. Lisbeth spends most of the film in a hospital or prison, essentially helpless while the world turns against her, and it’s striking to see such a powerful woman depending on others for change. Noomi Rapace is a caged animal in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, prowling her various cages and preparing to strike at the first opportunity. At this point the only threat to Rapace’s Oscar nomination is Noomi Rapace, since she can only be nominated for one film.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest is exciting filmmaking, as intelligent as it is entertaining. That’s a rarity these days, when it seems like every other thriller on the market is just a slasher in disguise or simply rehashing formulas Hitchcock himself got tired of over a decade before he died. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest abandons many of the clichés we’ve come to accept in these kinds of stories, while making the rest feel fresh again. This is a wonderful thriller. Now I just need to see The Girl Who Played With Fire to see if it actually makes sense.
CLR Rating: 9 out of 10
