Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (12A)****

The third and final episode in the film series based on Stieg Larsson's Millennium books sets itself up as a bona fide member of that small and exclusive genre, the paranoid thriller.
By The Newsroom
Published 26th Nov 2010, 10:43 BST
Updated 26th Nov 2010, 10:43 BST

Yet whilst this one aspires to be a companion piece to the likes of The Parallax View, it never quite measures up, emerging instead as a film that isn't quite as impressive as it likes to think it is.

For those who haven't seen (or read) the previous outings, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest will be hard to absorb. In this one ace computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is in hospital with gunshot wounds and about to be charged with the attempted murder of her father. Meanwhile a shady group of old men determine that both she and he be eradicated for the good of Sweden's national security and it falls to crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist), to save his punky pal. This is better than The Girl Who Played with Fire but falls short of the originality and verve of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Like one of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, it builds layer upon layer of detail before unravelling the tale with the air of a playground tease.

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A Scandinavian conspiracy thriller with supreme confidence, it eclipses rival Hollywood fare and signals a shift in what world audiences expect intelligent dramas to deliver.

Nevertheless, it is not as impressive as it likes to think it is and is more than a little muddled as it winds to its conclusion. Classic paranoid thriller? Not quite. Close, but no cigar.

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