Review - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009), R, 147 minutes - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the third and final installment in the Millennium trilogy based on the novels of the late Stieg Larsson. If you have not read the books or seen the previous two movies (my reviews can be found here and here), you'll definitely want to before jumping into this one. There are a handful of flashback sequences that touch on major plot points, but they really don't cover all that you need to know to fully understand what is going on this far into the story.

Hornet's Nest picks up immediately where The Girl Who Played With Fire ends - with Lisbeth being airlifted to the hospital after her confrontation with Zalachenko and Niedermann - and advances through Lisbeth's trial while Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and the staff at Millennium magazine try to expose the government conspiracy against her.

Noomi Rapace continues her amazing portrayal of computer hacker and social misfit Lisbeth Salander over this series of films. Due to timing of the US releases and nominations, Rapace may not snag an Oscar nod but she is definitely deserving. Her portrayal of Lisbeth (especially in Dragon Tattoo) is one of the strongest in recent memory.

Like its literary counterpart, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest does an excellent job of tying up the loose ends left behind by the first two installments. If you've read the books or seen the previous movies, you owe it to yourself to check this out.











*****SPOILERS*****

- Having read the novels, it has been quite interesting seeing what makes the cut in the movies and what doesn't, especially in this third installment. The threats made to Erica Berger are used in the movie, but not her going to work for the newspaper. They also don't even get into the relationship between Nyqvist and Figuerola, the special agent. The changes work out pretty well though, they actually help the pacing of the movie quite a bit.

- I was a little worried about how the ending was going to be portrayed on film. I really enjoyed how Larsson ended the book, but I really wasn't sure how that could translate. I turned out to be relatively pleased though. The final scene didn't quite pull off the same feel as it did in written form, but they didn't decide to completely change it either, so that was nice.

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