The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The third installment of the Millennium trilogy brought the quality back up after the unfortunate second installment. Just like in the previous film, the acting performances were excellent throughout. The writing started to make sense again, and with it came great atmosphere. While it wasn’t as chilling as it was at the beginning, it was still powerful and compelling enough for the film to go up to another level. How great is it to just enjoy yourself without having to constantly think about how the story doesn’t add up and wonder why the death count is higher than in a world war. My idea of a good thriller: suspense, atmosphere, zero melodrama. Perfection! (05.01.2017)

Trilogy has closed and unfortunately, continuation is something we, who have fallen under the spell of Stieg Larsson's storytelling, will never see. I read the books in one breath and although logically many things were cut out in the movies, I think these are the most successful film adaptations. I am just afraid of the American version. The meaning escapes me completely, the only reason that comes to mind is that the American audience does not have or does not want access to European films and therefore the producers have calculated that this trilogy can earn hundreds of millions in the American concept. For me, Nyqvist and Rapace are unbeatable, and even the best actors from the American or Australian continent will not surpass that high bar. (19.03.2011)

The slight qualitative progress seen in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in relation to the weak second instalment is due primarily to the more filmable book on which it is based (more action, more confrontation). Alfredson’s directing remains at the same mediocre level, however. The final instalment of the trilogy picks up exactly where the middle part left off, and it ends as unspectacularly as it begins (given Lisbeth’s nature, “autistic” seems an appropriate description). No grandiose climax with exploding houses or a last-second rescue. Nicely non-Hollywood. Unfortunately, only the setting of the climax differentiates The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest from any given run-of-the-mill crime thriller. It desperately lacks the atmosphere of the books, or rather of the first film. There are fewer supporting characters; Lisbeth is the main character, which corresponds to the book and the acting skill of the excellent Noomi Rapace. Of the storylines that have been dispensed with, the most regrettable thing is the reduction of the three romantic storylines into just one, between Mikael and Erik, which doesn’t even come from the Millennium trilogy, so the story is stripped of its interesting journalistic level. The film is watchable, but it was obviously made quickly and thrown at the audience while Millennium was still a hot topic of conversation and prominent in the press. Having not read the three above-average books, seeing two mediocre film adaptations definitely doesn’t encourage me to pick them up. 70% (09.12.2010)

After an absurd departure to a completely different type of plot after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest is an epochal finale. The finale has it all. It has a captivating courtroom grand climax, everything connects and everything fits together, Lisbeth has a mohawk again, and every Lisbeth/Mikael shipper is satisfied at the end. If Fincher or someone after him gets this far, it's gonna be a big deal. Both series probably diverge the most in the middle, but I'll gladly wait for the dragons/spies connection. (12.01.2012)

The same characters are played by the same actors as in the first film, but the screenwriter and director are different, and perhaps that partly influenced the result, which is clearly more hesitant than Oplev's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even the book is rated more reservedly, but the director left his mark on the film in several other areas as well. Lisbeth's stepbrother looks and acts like a 1960s James Bond, and I don't mean that as a compliment. The action scenes (fortunately there are few) reveal that Alfredson is not familiar with this genre. The criminal raids of rickety old men teetering between dialysis and death do not appear as dangerous and suspenseful as the film crew would like. Finally, the entire conspiracy, the complex plot that forces participants to commit more crimes many years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, seems somewhat exaggerated compared to the fact that it was covering up an inconsequential agent. Non-readers of the book, myself included, may be at a disadvantage compared to those who are familiar with Lisbeth's fate. Overall, it is a slightly above-average detective story that benefits from the popularity of the book series. However, if the Millennium books are anything like this, it begs the question of where the fantastic global success of the trilogy came from. Overall impression: 60%. (04.11.2013)