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Lisbeth Salander is an intriguing character whose certain choices in life will remain a mystery to us. Her character comes full circle in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest which is the final chapter of the Millenium trilogy that started with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Now as with many trilogies like The Matrix and Back To The Future the first movie can be seen as a standalone movie where parts two and three are filmed back-to-back and in terms of story are immediate sequels and one can’t be viewed without the other.
In the final chapter Lisbeth wakes up in the hospital after almost murdering her father and being killed by him and her stepbrother. The police want to take her in and the DA wants to put her on trial but her doctor who favors her takes her under his wing and stretches her recovery period as long as possible. Meanwhile Mikael Blomkvist is trying to proof her innocence with a special issue of Millennium dedicated to her story, but a secret society who has been pulling all the strings for decades isn’t too happy with that and will do whatever it takes to stop him.
Basically these are two movies in one. The first half is a conspiracy thriller like the previous two entries, but halfway through it turns into a court room drama. The fresh part of it being that for once this doesn’t involve a jury that has to be convinced.
I liked it better than the second movie which went too far into James Bond territory with Russian spies and an unstoppable henchman topping it off with some family ties. Said henchman does return in this movie but is given a bit part and an unnecessary final, though satisfying, showdown.
The conspiracy theme begins to run stale at this point and the court room scenes bring a breath of fresh air to the series. I liked it how they put Lisbeth front and center and displayed her verbal skills. The intellectual showdown going on here is great.
The third and last Millennium movie is a good payoff to a memorable character, but does not live up to the quality of the first movie. It’s also less raw than both previous movies, movies that contained a brutal rape scene as well as lesbian sex. Lisbeth is also doing less hacking if it all, that is done by Plague who provides one of the more funny/satisfying scenes in a hotel.
The lack of hacking isn’t really a point of negative criticism. Hacking on screen is really boring and a lot of movie makers have failed to bring it to the screen in a way that it is exciting to watch with our resulting to vague CGI scenes. Not even Hugh Jackman and 6 large screens can make hacking exciting on screen.
