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Created Oct 31, 2010 05:58PM PST • Edited Mar 03, 2013 03:22PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   The Lisbeth Salander trilogy ends with a thud in Hornet’s Nest. Not a bang or a blaze: those would require more than a stately pace and less dependence on revealed secrets. Slower than the second, which was less kinetic than the first, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest serves only to close the book on the ultimate Lefty persecution fantasy. While loyal fans won’t be too disappointed, the uninitiated should steer clear.

   Every last dark secret gets revealed, diminishing the shock effect of the major secrets revealed in the first two (Dragon Tattoo & Played with Fire). This third installment clearly needs the juice of secrets revealed to keep its motor going, in part to distract from its increasingly obvious reality exploitations.

   Now we wait for next year’s Hollywood remake to see what sordid master David Fincher will do with this classic tale. He’s long since proven himself the king of mordantly funny thrillers and has stocked his cast with great players: The Social Network’s Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist, Robin Wright as Erika Berger. Good thing, since the Swede’s have set the bar high, even given the muted buzz from this Hornet’s Nest.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Welcome back Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander! A well known and appreciated commodity, she’d become one of the great undercover agents in movie history by the second installment, so this valedictory turn is bittersweet.

   The rest of the cast are also plenty familiar from installments one and two. Standouts continue to be Michael Nyqvist’s crusading journalist (author Sieg Larsson’s alter ego) and Micke Spreitz’s malevolent blond lug. Spreitz deserves to be a Bond villain in the future.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Not without ample dark humor, some of it LOL.

    Payoffs are inevitable in final installments. The bad guys must die since there are no sequels for which they need to be alive. Still the story inevitably feels like checking items off a list.

11. Direction Good 3.0

    At the helm for the final two installments, Daniel Alfredson doesn’t seem to have the panache that Niels Arden Oplev’s direction imparted to Dragon Tatoo.

12. Play OK 2.5

    Adolescent persecution fantasy, a la Harry Potter’s Deathly Hallows, here with a secret patriarchy trained on one girl. Men are either sick pigs or halting fools. Core members of the supposed Swedish patriarchy are the former, all of them viewing Lisbeth Salander as chattel. Mikael Blomkvist is the latter, always hanging just out of Erika Berger’s needy reach.

    Also somewhat troubling is the hackneyed storytelling device of a healthy mental patient who is hounded by authentic-sounding psychiatric concerns. No doubt some legitimately troubled patients will see this and say that what the bad guys are doing to Lizbeth Salander is what is being done to them.

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Good 3.0

    Zalachenko’s fire damaged face reminds me of another current movie villain’s: Voldemort’s from Harry Potter.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.9

    Less edgy than the earlier installments, in part because the rape scene is mostly just heard. Visually, we see the shock and revulsion in the eyes of lawyers and judges when they view the video, but are spared viewing it ourselves. Effective and graceful, this.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Glib 2.0

    Sweden is presented once again as economically rich yet emotionally chilly. The latter is no doubt part of traditional Swedish character, yet seems exacerbated by the post-modern absence of nuclear families. For instance, Lizbeth Salander’s lawyer is heavily pregnant (though never acknowledged as such) and has other children she apparently never Mothers, all with no Father in the picture. The casual acceptance of adults emancipated from all but the bare biology of their familial roles is striking in its totality.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.4

    CircoReality liberties abound, making it harder and harder to maintain a willing suspension of disbelief. For instance, Lizbeth Salander becomes a cause célèbre in Sweden, her face, piercings and mohawk splashed across every TV screen and newspaper. She then gets dropped off on a Stockholm street corner, decked out in full Princess Punk regalia, and not a single passerby does so much as a double-take.

23. Biological Surreal 2.1

24. Physical Glib 1.4