WINTER OF DISCONTENT: The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Man, this one started unpromisingly! Imagine you’re the writer of a ridiculously successive pair of novels featuring an iconic, kick-ass heroine. You sit down to start work on volume three. What do you do: have your iconic, kick-ass heroine taking the fight to the various individuals who have conspired against her throughout her life, or have her laid up in a hospital bed while a rumpled middle-aged reporter pursues the same kind of plodding investigation he undertook in the previous books?

Me, I’d have gone with the former. Larsson – and director Daniel Alfredson – opt for the latter. Thus, the first half of ‘The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ has Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) even more backgrounded than in the previous instalments, recovering in hospital prior as the public prosecutor puts together a case against her courtesy of those pesky fingerprints on Bjurman’s gun from ‘The Girl who Played with Fire’, while Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) unravels an ever-wider-reaching conspiracy against her.

The next problem is that the nature of the aforementioned conspiracy is detailed in endlessly boring scenes of old men in suits sitting around in blandly anonymous rooms talking in hushed tones. Imagine a third-rate John le Carre homage delivered with all the dynamism of a party political broadcast and that’s basically how the first half of ‘The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ plays out.

A double-assassination attempt at the hospital and some mounting pressure against the staff at Millennium (Blomkvist is racing against time to publish a special edition blowing the lid off it all before the powers that be can have Lisbeth sectioned again) enliven things slightly, but the absence of Salander as a pro-active character drains the life out of the proceedings.

As the second half got underway, with the trial looming, I could feel my will to live evaporating. Full disclosure: with the exception of a couple of Sidney Lumet films, I can’t stand courtroom dramas. By their very nature, they make for a static and visually uninteresting drama.

My surprise was palpable, then, when things pepped up no end, the legal shenanigans juxtaposed with an official investigation against the conspirators. The courtroom scenes, while betraying an absolute lack of realism (so much new and illegally obtained evidence introduced at the last minute without the judge batting an eyelid? are they really that liberal in Sweden?), benefit from Salander’s powers of photographic and verbatim recall. Her reduction of the prosecutor to bamboozled idiot is beautiful to behold, as is the arrest of a key prosecution witness, hauled out of court on child pornography charges.

A coda wrapping up the almost obligatory loose end finally gives Salander the chance to kick out the jambs in the action stakes. All told, though, ‘The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ is as big a plod as it’s immediate predecessor, and a not a patch on the watchable (but hugely overrated) ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. Here’s to David Fincher giving things a shot in the arm!

WINTER OF DISCONTENT: The Girl who Played with Fire

The only instalment of the trilogy whose English title is anywhere near an accurate translation from the Swedish, ‘The Girl who Played with Fire’ is even more disappointing than its predecessor in backgrounding the fascinating Lisbeth Salander (played to perfection by Noomi Rapace) in favour of a plodding journalistic investigation undertaken by the hangdog Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist). It also disappoints in that Daniel Alfredson’s direction isn’t a patch on Niels Arden Oplev’s and the entire production betrays its made-for-TV roots so shabbily that it makes ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ look like ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.

The next problem requires me to hoist the jolly SPOILER ALERT for a paragraph.

‘Dragon Tattoo’ ended with the much-misused Lisbeth fiscally benefiting from the downfall of Blomqvist’s corporate nemesis and sunning herself in the Caribbean on the proceeds. Which, after all the shit she’d gone through, seemed only fair (if a tad deus ex machina-ish). Thus ‘Played with Fire’ opens with some extended and not particularly interesting business regarding her return to Stockholm, her acquisition of property, and her loaning out of an apartment to a lesbian entrepreneur who owns a sex shop (cue graphic and narratively pointless – but, if I’m being honest – still very watchable girl-girl scene). She also checks up on the loathsome Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson) in a tortuously contrived sequence, the only purpose of which is to get her prints on a gun.

(Lower the jolly SPOILER, first mate!)

Meanwhile, Millennium magazine have hired wannabe crusading journalist Dag Svensson (Hans Christian Thulin) who wants to blow the lid on a prostitution ring uncovered by his girlfriend Mia (Jennie Silfverhjelm) whilst researching her thesis. Dag and Mia are trying to track down the shadowy “Zala”, reputed to be the sex trade kingpin; Blomqvist throws in his tuppence-ha’penny worth by confronting some of the men who have availed themselves of Zala’s service.

No sooner does Blomqvist discover a link to Lisbeth than Dag and Mia are murdered. Blomqvist hurriedly tries to make contact with Lisbeth, unaware that their parallel courses are about to … yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.

‘Played with Fire’ desultorily sketches out two narrative arcs that are so depressingly derivative that it’s almost impossible to care by the time the overwrought and laughably ludicrous finale roles around. (How ludicrous? Imagine the “lonely grave of Paula Schultz” sequence from ‘Kill Bill Vol 2’ redone without Tarantino’s knowing sense of irony, throw in a Bond villain type cipher who’s blond, Aryan, built like a brick shithouse and incapable of feeling pain, then have Blomqvist walk manfully into the middle of the whole farrago as if he were Clint Eastwood.)

If ‘ Dragon Tattoo’ was little more than bad Agatha Christie with rape scenes, then the touchstone for ‘Played with Fire’ is more along the lines of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. If I’m spoiling anything by referring to this as the “Lisbeth, I am your father” episode, then I make no apologies whatsoever. There is one standout scene, dealing with Lisbeth’s clinical take-down of a couple of bikers, and it’s pretty cool to watch Rapace capitalizing on the victim-turned-angel-of-vengeance personification of Salander from the first movie and turn her into an authentic kick-ass action heroine.

That said, I’m not holding out much hope for ‘The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’.