I didn't see Fire in the theaters and that's the one with our mag cameo.
Review: 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'
Amy Biancolli, Hearst Movie Writer
Friday, October 29, 2010

POLITE APPLAUSE Thriller. Directed by Daniel Alfredson. Starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. (R. 148 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)


Music Box Films
Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth Salander again in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," the third and final film based on Stieg Larsson's novels.

"The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" is one of the knottiest, talkiest tangles of celluloid to roll into theaters this year.

It is, as even semi-conscious moviegoers already know, the third and closing chapter in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy - based on the hugely popular Swedish novels about a damaged goth pixie and the crusading journalist who befriends and defends her. "Hornet's Nest" isn't the best of the three (that would be the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), but it's the most challenging. It requires patience, fortitude and the ability to keep tabs on multiple characters in complicated subplots.

When we last saw Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) at the end of "The Girl Who Played With Fire," she was shot in the head, buried alive and lived to whack her father with an ax, all while being pursued by an insensate blond monstrosity who happens to be her half brother. "Hornet's Nest" opens with flashbacks to these events, then pays hospital visits to Lisbeth and her hacked-up daddy, a terrorizing Soviet defector she also once set ablaze.

The film begins in earnest as members of a long-dormant shadow conspiracy are roused into action. With Lisbeth facing attempted murder charges, editor Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his staff dig up information on the elusive men of power who've been violating her for decades. Meanwhile, the Swedish government opens its own investigation. The conspirators conspire. And the mute albino hulk (Micke Spreitz) roams the countryside, offing people.

What unfolds is part political thriller, part police procedural, part "Da Vinci Code" hooey and part courtroom drama, with bouts of peripheral serial killing and lurid psychological horror of the evil-shrink variety. Lisbeth, small of frame and strange of hair, is a figure of explosive violence and implosive psychic wounds. But she spends most of the film confined: first to a hospital room, then to a cell. What's more, she barely speaks.

Lisbeth's saga is, at its core, a cautionary tale for abusive caregivers and delinquent social services, but it's almost undone by sprawl. That the movie holds together at all is a testament to a smart, meaty screenplay by Jonas Frykberg and Ulf Ryberg and Daniel Alfredson's assured direction, which treats the most ludicrous plot developments with stylish Hitch****ian poise.

"Hornet" marks the last of the Scandinavian adaptations; in about a year, we'll see the first of the American productions, directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig. But for now, and for audiences who won't faint at the sight of subtitles or shrink from t***** plotting, the Swedish films offer a trio of seductively brainy thrillers.

-- Advisory: Strong violence, some sexual material and brief language.