The final segment of the menacing “Millennium” trilogy is here, and it couldn’t have found a more inappropriate venue than the gray-haired Chelsea Theater.
If you haven’t read the bestselling novels by deceased Swedish communist Stieg Larsson or seen the first two films, that doesn’t really matter.
A quick online summary is all one needs for the back story on Lisbeth Salander, Larsson’s defiant hacker-punk heroine who is determined to kick lots of ass and let every one else take their sweet time figuring out why.
The plot-driven trilogy is enormously complicated, so suffice it to say for “Hornet’s Nest” that Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) is paying the price for the revenge that she took on her father in the last movie. After being mistreated by her dad, her doctor, her legal guardian and the state, a veritable conspiracy of dirty old men, Lisbeth struck back
but wound up with a bullet in her skull.
Luckily, she pulls through surgery, and the perfunctory follow-up assassination attempt, to get her day in court.
With the help of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), she then seeks to bring down the group of security state officials that shielded her abusive father in the first place. And it turns out they could just be incriminated in white slavery and child pornography as well. How convenient.
What could have been simple feminist revenge fantasy becomes moderate-to-highly affecting feminist revenge fantasy thanks to its persistently coordinated art direction. Garish lighting and darkly toned sets lend the film an expressionistic gothic mood that goes unbroken during its brutal two and a half hour running time.
Rapace’s wickedly minimalist performance doesn’t hurt either. Despite the distractions of a couple of comical characters and the lilting Swedish language, this movie belongs to Lisbeth from beginning to end.
