A tepid lukewarm anticlimax
Wow, talk about a disappointment. The third film in the Millennium trilogy plays less like a thriller than as a scam. There isn’t an independent movie here. Well, actually there could have been. You could plausibly take the movies, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” cut out all the repetitive exposition and superfluous plot points and combine the rest into a superior movie. But instead we have a story that takes twice as long as it should to tell. Why? Perhaps it was because they knew a person like me who loved the first movie, aka a sucker, would on principle go and see every movie in the series. (It may have also mattered that the author is dead and thus can’t write an unlimited amount of sequels. They may be trying to squeeze the most profit out of a limited supply.)
If you saw the first two movies then you basically know what happens in this movie. Not much new is introduced. As in the second movie, the journalist Mikael Blomvist, played a third time by Michael Nyquvist, is writing an expose on a secret cabal called “The Section.” They are involved in communist defection, sex trafficking, really bad stuff like that. Quite a lot of time is spent on him going around and telling people what the story is about and when he plans to publish. The story is retold several times. Meanwhile our heroine Lisbeth Salandar, played again by Noomi Rapace, is in the hospital healing from several bullet wounds. The main set piece of the movie is her trial for the attempted murder of her father. All of the evidence presented at the trial is taken directly from the previous two movies. It is a pretty clear case of self-defense and there is little suspense as to the outcome of it. The prosecution has a flimsy argument (Lisbeth is crazy), which it repeats endlessly. I think you hear it about four times by the time the movie is over.
The first two movies did a very good job of being thrillers. The plots were always very procedural but they still managed to insert realistic action sequences and fights at appropriate intervals. Would it surprise you to know that there is but one action sequence in this entire movie, that it is not very long, and it is perhaps the least exciting action sequence in the entire series? I mean what the hell is that all about. Has the director, Daniel Alfredson, forgotten the genre he is working in?
The worst thing of course is even though the plot of this movie is wafer-thin it still had room for action. Alfredson simply chose not to shoot any of it. Everything is told in the passive voice. For example, Blomvist apartment is broken into and documents are stolen. Instead of showing the break-in as it is happening (action!), we are shown Blomvist talking to a security guard about the break-in (passive voice). Then there is the character of Niederman, the huge baddie/Lisbeth’s half-brother from the second movie. Several times in this movie the plot calls for him to steal cars, break into homes, and kill people. Do we see that happen? No, we see Niederman sitting and watching TV in somebody’s home as the camera slowly zooms out to reveal a dead guy in the background. If you can believe it, one of the biggest threats in this movie is a couple of anonymous email that are sent to the journalists and say insidious things like, “Are you afraid of the dark?” Talk about lukewarm scares. Really, it kind of surprises me that this movie is rated R. Almost nothing happens.
The first movie had this very dangerous edge to it that made watching it a really visceral thrilling experience. That feeling is basically nonexistent here. There is a scene where Salandar walks down a hallway in full gothic battle regalia, piercings, and Mohawk. It looks cool but such badassness feels out of place in such a tepid movie. In fact, the whole character of Lisbeth Salandar has been reduced to what is essentially a supporting role. She spends the whole time in a hospital and then a courtroom. Her character is not the type that speaks much, so when she is also not physically doing anything, well, not very much happens. True, Noomi Rapace is one of the few actresses who can still be interesting while just sitting there, but that isn’t nearly enough to carry what is supposed to be a thriller. It should be noted that the Mr. Lazy, Daniel Alfredson, was not the director for the first film. That director was a guy named Niels Arden Oplev. I don’t know why they didn’t pick him to direct the entire trilogy but whoever made that decision really screwed up royally.
You know who could do a much better job with this story? David Fincher, that’s who. His version starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig comes out next year. Just in time too, I still haven’t gotten enough of Lisbeth Salandar. Let’s remind the Swedes what a badass movie looks like.
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