Before I’d even seen this movie, I’d seen enough previews for it that I’d planned the review in my head. I was going to draw a comic which had three stick figures and went something like: THREE GUYS HAVE A WEIRD THING HAPPEN (picture of figures next to whatever gave them powers), GET POWERS (picture of them freaking out, waving their little stick arms), EVERYTHING IS FUN (picture of them doing fun thing), OH NO IT ALL WENT HORRIBLY WRONG WHAT A SHOCK (picture of them all dead with crosses for eyes). And look, my prediction wasn’t far off, because I have been to movies more than three times in my life and I know how these things go. But instead of cursing you all with my awful drawing skills, I’m actually going to give this a proper review, because it deserves one.
Chronicle opens with high school senior Andrew (Dane DeHaan, appropriately sulky and gawky) setting up his new video camera to record his life: his physically abusive, alcoholic father; his dying mother, strapped to machines in her bed; his school life, where bullies torment him mercilessly and the only person who gives him any time is his philosophical-stoner cousin, Matt (Alex Russell). Andrew doesn’t do himself any favours by bringing a video camera to school and creeping everyone out—in fact, he’s generally unlikeable, but wholly sympathetic regardless—but it comes in handy when, at a warehouse party, he’s summoned by Matt and the school’s gosh-darn endearing Mr Popularity Steve (Michael B Jordan) to a strange hole in the ground. They go underground, the camera gets fuzzy, things are weird, then bam: they are back in the sunlight and suddenly the three of them have developed telekinetic powers. All right! Awesome! This could never go wrong!
The movie succeeds because the three do exactly what you (well, I) would do if you had telekinetic powers. There’s a nod to the Lego video game franchise as they build things with their mind; they skim rocks over rivers; they use a leaf blower to blow up the skirts of the pretty girls. (Hey, I didn’t say they were mature about it.) They start small as they learn to control their powers, and the three develop a close bond—but it doesn’t take long before a harmless prank gets dangerously close to a fatality and the three lay down some ground rules, including the most important: don’t use the powers when you’re angry. However, teenagers do angry really well, and when things go wrong, it happens on an epic scale.
The movie centres around Andrew, as the one with the camera, but all three characters feel convincing: they dress and act like normal people, are occasionally jerks and frequently humane. Matt’s squirm-worthy attempts to prove to a girl that he’s, like, cool, but, like, above being like popular and stuff are painfully endearing; Steve’s determination to be a good politician see him take on Andrew as a challenge, where they use their powers to gain him popularity in the most wholesome way possible. Even Andrew’s jerk of a father has some depth: you hate him, but you have some understanding of him. This, all told in what is essentially a found-footage film (though both Chris and I had thought of the phrase “lost-footage”, as the movie uses footage from cameras that are destroyed, CCTV footage, people’s iPads and so on) is very impressive; it even dodges the problem of Andrew never being on camera when he gets the idea to control it with his mind so it is always looking at the scene from a short distance. The special effects are faultless, which makes the movie’s many tricks—small or large—great fun. The boys never break from character, and Chronicle tracks in an hour and a half the path to villainy that George Lucas barely achieved in the first (second?) three Star Wars movies.
Chronicle doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test—there are women, but they never talk to each other—and you do occasionally want to take Andrew by the ear and get him to the counsellor’s office for a thorough discussion about emotional control and dealing with turmoil at home (and finding somewhere new to live—or a way to get his father in jail.) But on the whole, Chronicle is a surprisingly excellent film that doesn’t bother too much with the why of getting superpowers (because really, who cares?) as much as what kind of person you are, and how you deal with them when you have them.
I give it four out of five car rides to school.
Like the birthday kid at a swimming party, you’re thrown in in the deep end of this head-scratching psychological thriller and left to flail about helplessly for about the first half hour before someone throws you a flotation device, but even then, it’s maybe the equivalent of three ping-pong balls rather than a lifejacket. What this does have at the start is a brylcreemed Robert Ledgard (Antionio Banderas), craniofacial plastic surgeon extraordinaire who lives in a sprawling Spanish estate; Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), a beautiful woman who wanders around a sparsely furnished room wearing nothing but a body stocking; and a house full of servants who seem totally at ease with the fact that Robert has a woman locked in a room in his house. Why she is there, why Robert has video cameras in her room that feed into his wall-sized television and why Marilia (Marisa Paredes)—his longtime housekeeper—is so complicit in the captivity so badly is the soul of the story, told back and forth in time from the death of Robert’s wife up to the present (actually the future, as it’s set in February 2012.)
I wouldn’t dare spoiler anything for you, but be assured the horror of the story—and you will be horrified—has little to do with the new, resilient skin that Robert is experimenting with and more to do with the horrendous acts people commit. If you aren’t in a position to deal with sexual assault on film, stay far away from this one. Not only are the scenes convincingly awful, as the experience must be, but the confusion surrounding them can make for an uncomfortable viewing. I’m loathe to say more and ruin the movie, which held countless surprises, but there you have it. It touches on a few sex/gender issues as well, which Pedro Almodovar has done in the past. Having a director out there game to try some new stuff is great, but I guess I feel a little out of my depth in commenting too much on it.
So, onto things I know! I know I generally love Antonio but found him completely alarming in this film; I know that the acting was amazing from everyone. Almodovar is adept at getting nuances out of actors who get offered Western roles that aren’t quite as meaty (Penelope Cruz, for example, is excellent in Volver but more popular in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, where everyone is required to be melodramatic) so seeing Banderas in a role where he wasn’t likeable was hard—because usually he’s so lovely in them—but also impressive. The choppy narrative style was an interesting route to take and, luckily, fell on the side of compelling instead of annoying (though I probably annoyed everyone around me by whispering my confusion at Chris every five minutes.) It was a very narrowly landscaped film—we get a feel for Ledgard’s home but not the environment around it, and only a few other settings, which means it doesn’t feel particularly Spanish (apart from the fact that it’s in Spanish and subtitled) and instead feels appropriately claustrophobic.
It’s a confronting, engaging, revenge-driven flick filled with relationships you’re continually unsure of. Who do you hate? Where does the right of revenge end? Why do people ask rhetorical questions anyway? Well, perhaps I’ll stop and just rate it something high like eight out of ten tiger stripes.
As requested by the lovely Afsana
David Fincher: he’s great, isn’t he? The Social Network was one of my favourite movies of recent years and he also made this little-known flick called Fight Club that you can’t mention in a sentence without everyone in the vicinity falling over themselves to sputter out their adoration of. He’s a talented director who knows how to craft addictive movies with an original edge.
So why, oh lord why, did he choose to remake Niels Arden Oplev’s Swedish film that was perfectly capable of telling the story already? Why did he waste months and years of his precious filmmaker time to give everyone a third outing of the Millennium Trilogy? 30 million people worldwide have read the books; the first film made over a hundred million smackers. This is not some obscure gem that needed a fresh facelift: it’s all tremendously modern and already available in literary and film formats. So the question is: what did Fincher hope to achieve with his version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and did he succeed? He claims that it is a completely different film from the Swedish version, but it’s not, of course. When they both work off the same source material, a dense brick of a novel with elaborate backgrounds for each character and incident, they are going to hit the same beats. Yes, it is different, because someone different directed it and the actors are different. Yes, it’s different because everyone speaks in English with Swedish accents (though they read Swedish-language newspapers.) But honestly, apart from a small change in the ending, it is the same film told the same way, and you’ll feel exactly the same by the end as you would at the end of the Swedish version. (That is: paranoid about government agencies, horrified by all men and never able to have sex again.)
It’s hard to see past that to judge the film on its own merits. Of course, it’s wonderfully cast: Rooney Mara captured the damaged (and thin) look wonderfully to be computer hacker/ward of the state Lisbeth Salander; Daniel Craig is the perfect age to be disgraced but excellent investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist; and Christopher Plummer is expansively patriarchal as Henrik Vanger, the wealthy industrialist who inadvertently brings the two together to solve a forty-year-old crime: the loss of his beloved niece. It’s not all Agatha Christie innocence, however: you will be disturbed, by the outcome and also by many scenes disturbing in both sexual and non-sexual gore (Lisbeth’s relationship with her new guardian Bjurman—Yorick van Wageningen—is especially something you’ll want to cover your eyes for.) The growing friendship between youthful Salander and craggy Blomkvist is convincing and enjoyable to witness; the peripheral characters are portrayed just about as you’d imagine them. On a visual level, Fincher perhaps overtakes Oplev purely because where Oplev sees the place he lives and conveys it in a natural way, Fincher sees it from our non-Swedish perspective, revealing the white, icy beauty and Ikea-white angles of homes and buildings. His intro, also, is quite mind-blowing, as a soft, tender tinkly piano barrels into a tar and sweat-soaked Karen O intro as Mara and Craig sex things up in an edgy, oiled-up way along with an eagle, a snake, and some raunchy flowers. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor score the whole flick with requisite rage and gentleness.
Lisbeth’s use of Google and Wikipedia to track someone down seems to undermine her enormous talent in the hacking field; the Swedish accents sometimes slip; I felt that despite the epic running time—nearly three hours—Lisbeth’s storyline was not given enough time; during a Eureka moment for Blomkvist he makes such a ridiculous show of taking off his glasses in mute shock it seemed like a cliché in what is otherwise a very cliché-free movie; and in frustratingly Hollywood way of thinking, female Rooney is given countless crotch shots and appears fully naked frequently while male Blomkvist (who is polyamorous and hardly a prude) reveals his chest and the barest hint of butt-crack.
Still, these facts don’t at all ruin the film. Fincher’s use of actors in their natural, often makeup-free state is commendable (and something I enjoyed about the first movie trilogy); the long running time doesn’t mean the movie drags—it’s enthralling from start to finish; Mara’s Salander, like Noomi Rapace in the Swedish version, is an absolute treat of a character, scarred from a lifetime of people screwing her over but with a raspy charm all her own: wearing a t-shirt saying “Fuck you you fucking fuck”, explaining Blomkvist’s background to the man who has hired her: “Sometimes he performs cunnilingus. Not often enough in my opinion”—she really is amazing and is the new style of heroine everyone says she is. It passes the Bechdel Test (barely) and, in Sweden, is called Men who Hate Women, so the women are smart and not underwritten.
By all means, go see it if you’re unable to see the Swedish version—it’s a well-crafted film telling a wholly interesting and grotesque family crime story. But without it showing me anything new about the story (which admittedly, I have possibly overdosed on), it is still a vaguely pointless exercise. Because of this, and my clear ragey bias about it, I’m not going to give this movie a rating. See it for yourselves and let me know what you think.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is out January 12.
To the sound of retro-eighties musical styling and lashings of bubblegum-pink opening credits we are let into the world of The Kid: straight-faced Ryan Gosling, pulling on his driving gloves and preparing for a stint as a getaway car driver. The following driving scene, while breathtaking, isn’t quite the chase scene we’re used to—it’s more tactical driving than 6 Fast 6 Furious or whatever car movies the kids are watching nowadays—and it’s also one of only two real chase set pieces in the film. Don’t let that fact dissuade you, as Drive is a brilliant film, and Gosling just proves that he can do anything. But mostly he can out-smirk anyone.
The Kid is a getaway driver by night and a Hollywood stunt driver by day, spending his other waking hours as a mechanic working for ideas man Shannon (Bryan Cranston). He also appears to be indescribably lonely, never seeing anyone outside of those he drives around, Shannon himself, and his shyly smiling neighbour, Irene. It’s an eventual encounter with Irene in the car park that leads to the relationship that—while beautifully touching—changes the life of everyone in the film. As the friendship between The Kid, Irene, and Irene’s young son Benicio develops (and you’re never entirely sure what it develops into; it’s mostly told through five long silences, three big smiles and some hand-holding), their lives are disrupted when Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac, and, yes, a “deluxe” joke is made) returns from prison. Nothing does noir better than a plotline that involves one last job before everyone lives happily ever after (and involves someone called Blanche—Christina Hendricks, who is dressed down and wonderful but not worthy of her top billing); nothing makes movie like a situation going wrong in spectacular, bloodthirsty fashion.
Drive keeps up a cracking pace despite the fact that you get no hint of the violence to come for quite some time, until the Kid is at a bar and encounters someone he’s driven previously. There are moments of such tension that I gripped the seat handles and closed my eyes; there are moments I wanted to last forever. It’s a world so ridiculous that you can’t tell if it’s realistic, or if it’s just that the Kid is so wrapped up in his own world that he believes he’s in a movie. The crimes he assists in seem victimless and he helps people to do good, then gets revenge when people are bad.
The choices of direction are interesting; the car chases are often told via the expressions on those inside rather than panning shots of the outside of the car; the Kid’s calm enthralling against the panic of others. Moments of violence you expect the camera to pan away from actually stick around for more splattering than you thought you could bear. Small touches—the cleaning of a prized knife after it’s been used by a character to kill a friend; the sun-dappled family moment by the river; a shark-like murder by the sea—they’re all perfectly handled and indicative of an excellent movie.
Rounding out the flawless cast is Hellboy, aka Ron Perlman as a bad guy whose best moment is laughing uproariously in front of a bored blonde (and who has more lower face than any other actor but it makes him completely irresistible, to be honest) and Albert Brooks, Shannon’s benefactor and one of the few characters to show genuine emotion. The movie on the whole is an unexpected delight—I say unexpected because I included this smaller-than-usual movie poster to show that the Australian poster looks all WHOO DRIVING MOVIE VROOM VROOOOOOM when really, that leads you totally astray, and I recommend going off this next one.
I give it nine 
out of ten stomps to the head. I might even give it ten out of ten but I haven’t done a perfect score yet and am not sure if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to do it. Also, even when they’re appropriate, long silences and people enigmatically not replying to questions just makes me want to tear my hair out.
At the beginning of Rango, a few owls kicking around in mariachi gear and wielding instruments start singing laments to our lizardy hero, who, they declare, will inevitably die. It’s a bit confronting for a kids movie, and just to go off on a small and not really movie-ruining spoiler, isn’t true: by the end, they confess they meant it in the we’ll-all-die-eventually kind of way. At the beginning of Limitless, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is standing in a dapper suit on the edge of a building’s balcony about to fling himself off and pondering what happened to get him to this point. And then we go back to the start of the story and, in a small but not really movie-ruining spoiler, when we get back to him on the edge of his balcony, he changes his mind—it’s not the end of the movie at that point and there’s still plenty of danger to follow, in case you were wondering. But honestly, what is it with movies at the moment where they feel the need to signpost the fact that there is a threat to the main character? Of course there is going to be some kind of drama, that is the whole point of films. But all these flicks where we’re supposed to assume the main character dies, only to have them not actually be dead—it’s frustrating. No, of course I didn’t want Rango to die. (Note I am less vehement about Bradley Cooper.) But just stop it, film industry, okay? We’re perfectly capable of sitting through the start of a movie knowing there’s action to come, and we don’t need it pointed out. That’s what ads are for and frankly, we’ve already paid for our tickets at that point, haven’t we?
With that rant over, now to get into Limitless proper. If you’ve ever heard the old trope about how we only use 20% of our brain and the other 80% is just lying around letting us knock over glasses of water because we’re uncoordinated, this plotline may be of interest. Struggling writer Eddie is moping about with no motivation and a ponytail (that’s how you know he’s downtrodden, apaprently), and has been dumped by his straightlaced girlfriend Lindy (soon to be Sucker Punched Abbie Cornish). At this low point, he meets up with his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who used to deal drugs in his past and has now come up in the world, so to speak—the drugs he now peddles are worth $800 a pop. Against his better judgement, he accepts a single pill from Vernon—and suddenly that other 80% of his brain is firing on all cylinders. And one pill—you’ll be shocked at this—just ain’t enough. Despite the minor blip in the radar that is Vernon turning up in the next scene with a bullet to the head, Eddie secures a stack of pills and then becomes a kind of SuperEddie, all-round genius, social networker, lady puller and stockmarket genius—all of which happens, obviously, only after he loses the ponytail and gets a nice suave haircut. But such a fabulous drug doesn’t come without its consequences, and along with a loan shark and a creepy stalker, the awesome solution starts to screw with his sanity.
Limitless is actually pretty good. What couldn’t be entertaining about seeing someone know everything, learn languages in hours, take over the stockmarket and have photographic recall of everything in his past that he has ever seen, even briefly? It taps into everyone’s dream of what you could achieve if all your brainspace wasn’t taken up by useless facts like Hey There’s That Guy From The Bourne Supremacy etc.
Bradley Cooper, king of Alpha Male roles, barely convinces at the start when Eddie is a slouchy deadbeat, but (gasp) does wonderfully as a smooth operator when high, and then alarms completely with his third haircut. Abbie Cornish is fairly restrained as Eddie’s staid love interest, but it makes for a convincing and interesting scene later on when she refuses the drug despite knowing what it could do for her. Robert De Niro turns up as finance wrangler Carl Van Loon, keen on Eddie’s newfound stock knowledge and his insight on a merger with another company. Rounding out the major players is professional lowered brow Andrew Howard as Gennady, the man who lent Eddie a hundred grand when he was starting out and now wants in on the altered reality.
It’s exciting, every new situation doused in a hearty amount of pop culture—see Eddie’s fight scene, his talents gathered from television and Bruce Lee flicks—and pretty non-stop entertainment-wise. As the scope of the drug’s hold becomes clear, and the unnerving problems arise, you are nervous for Eddie and his tenuous grip on reality. Good sound, great action, cool idea—it’s what action movies are supposed to be.
In summary: Meets Expectations. It doesn’t exceed them because it is the right kind of entertainment from a blockbuster action film, but still has its flaws—the finance stuff does dull the excitement maybe a touch, even though you see why he’s doing it. The movie then has the monetary concerns of Inside Job plus the skewed-reality thrills of The Adjustment Bureau, a fact that maybe only I see because they’re two of the more recent movies I’ve seen. Actually, coupled with the similar intro of Rango, maybe there are just no new movie ideas. Anyway, there is also a frustratingly unsolved crime and a sense at the end that you’re not sure whether Eddie is a poor schmuck caught up in things beyond his control or an A-grade asshole straight out of The Hangover, which, god forbid, is about to spout a sequel. Still, there are some genuinely nifty moments in it, one involving a pool of blood that made the whole audience squirm (you’ll know it when you see it), and it sure holds you in thrall. Anyway, everyone should have to go see a film directed by a guy called Neil Burger, just to stick it to the people who probably bullied him at school.
Unknown was pretty average and thus, after a few false starts, gets only a short amount of my mental energy expended on it.
Liam Neeson is on a plane with his hot wife and her improbable hair. Upon landing in Berlin, where he’s about to give a speech on bio-who-cares, he gets in a taxi which swerves to avoid a fridge and then lands in the river. When he gets out of hospital and barrels towards his hotel, no one knows who he is—his wife doesn’t recognise him, and someone else is standing in his place, with his name tag on. Was he never who he thought he was? If he is, what is happening? And why didn’t he get a haircut before the movie started so it wouldn’t flop everywhere and distract the viewer?
This movie had a lot of potential—Neeson is a solid actor, the idea is pretty interesting, and the actual outcome not at all flat. But it’s stuck with some overly ridiculous car chase scenes—not one but two separate incidents with cars driving down pedestrian paths (once backwards!) with no honking, and all you can do is think: is this one person’s life/sanity worth the potential death of everyone who decided daringly to walk on the footpath today? And while on the carnage discussion, why does pretty much everyone involved, or barely involved, have to die? I just stopped being concerned about people because I assumed they would be eventually shot in the head, and never was invested enough in the characters in the first place to care.
In Summary: Below Expectations. There’s probably a worse movie out there at the moment (I’m making brash assumptions here about Disney’s Handy Manny Motorcycle Adventure, which is unfair of me) but it couldn’t be more middle of the road if it were that machine what paints stripes in the middle of roads.
Despite initial reservations, about fifteen minutes into this movie I turned to Chris and said, “I am enjoying this movie.”
Half an hour later I whispered to him, “No, I’m really enjoying this movie.”
And by the end, a big happy smile on my face, I declared to everyone within yelling distance: “WHAT A GREAT MOVIE!” and then attacked the poor cinema attendant with my full-force Good Movie Beam and actually, cheesily, thanked him.
The Adjustment Bureau. The Bourne-type posters, with ex-Bourne Matt Damon hanging onto Emily Blunt’s hand as they are mid-run, make you think it’s going to be some sock-em smackdown movie. Instead, it has much less bloodthirsty action than you’d expect and more talking and romance, yet despite that midly depressing description, still manages to be completely entertaining. Damon is David Norris, running for the New York senate, and about to blitz the election with a huge lead. After a picture is leaked of him after an unfortunate mooning incident, he is in a bathroom preparing his losing speech when he discovers a beautiful young ballet dancer, Elise Sellas (Blunt), hiding from security in one of the toilets. One hypercharged conversation later, they are making out on the sinks and thus their relationship begins.
Fate seems to have brought them together, especially when he meets her on a bus again the next day, but in reality fate is a team of guys in hats who do their best to keep the world on the correct path. This is the Adjustment Bureau, who know that Elise and David must be kept apart and do everything in their power to manipulate their relationship. While they sneak mysteriously around in their fancy headgear, freezing time and fixing people’s thoughts, our two heroes want nothing more than each other.
This movie works so well because of Damon and Blunt: their chemistry is stronger than a year eight science lab accident. If you weren’t emotionally invested in their relationship the film would fall completely flat, but right from their first chat you are cheering the two of them on. Damon makes a speech about how his team hired a seven thousand dollar consultant to determine how scuffed a politician’s shoes should be; Blunt dunks his phone in his coffee when it rings too much; they are, honestly, completely hilarious. Their angst at being apart becomes your angst. David’s anger at the Adjustment Bureau is justified and it’s all you can do not to boo them when they appear on-screen with the books they each hold, dictating the future of the world. When one of the Bureau takes pity on the beleaguered couple, you are delighted.
In stark contrast to recent action flick Unknown’s constant fighting, this has a very satisfying lack of danger to the public on the whole, with few car chases and limited strangers getting pushed over and no one getting shot by the bad guys, whose power remains solely in their hats. Not to say it doesn’t have an edge—one particular crash jolted me right out of my mellow complacency—but I have lost a little faith in action movies after Unknown and it was good to see something that still held the excitement level of a thriller without having to watch some pointless carnage. And this is from someone who likes pretend carnage: Machete is still my favourite movie of 2010, and possibly of all time.
With Terrence Stamp grey and ominous as Bureau member Thompson, and rather attractive Anthony Mackie as Bureau turncoat Harry Mitchell—not to mention the cameo appearances by the likes of Jesse Jackson and David’s amusing interview with Jon Stewart—the casting choices round out nicely. The cinematography does the movie wonders, following the characters at pace and making the fun action—the Bureau members can go into a door in one place and careen out of a door on the other side of town—easy to follow and super enjoyable. The only bone I have to pick is with the soundtrack: unnecessary twee in places and invasive in others, it became something noticeable rather than a backdrop to what was really happening on screen. Still, not enough for me to do anything more than note; I won’t be writing a strongly worded letter to director/screenwriter George Nolfi or to the estate of Philip K Dick, whose short story “Adjustment Team” this was based on.
In summary: Exceeds Expectations, is a total blast, and you’ll secretly wish for Damon and Blunt to ditch their respective partners and hook the hell up. It is much better than the other ballet-related flick of 2011 (*cough*BlackSwanwasstupid*cough*). Also, anyone who walks past you wearing a hat will be in immediate danger of getting crash-tackled to the ground with you yelling, “I AM A MASTER OF MY OWN FATE!”
Or that could just be me. Sorry, general public.
So I had a completely smug moment when I went up to pay for our tickets and said, “Two adults for The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, thanks,” and the cinema person said, “You know, you’re the only person who’s managed to say the title correctly.” Little did she know I’d sold five billion of the book, read it in a frenzy the day it came out, and attacked all customers who bought it afterwards with “I finished this yesterday/last week/a year ago! It is SO GOOD.” Anyway, while the title makes sense, especially within the context of the whole Millennium trilogy (deep breath): number one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, followed by The Girl who Played with Fire, then ending on The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, it’s still true. Long titles are difficult to remember, like the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (aka “The Potato...Jersey...book” to customers) and A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian (“Uh, The Story of Tanks in Brazil?”). So while they’re quirky, publishers shouldn’t do it. And while we’re on the topic of things that are ridiculously long, the film The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, at more than two and a half hours, is ridiculously long. It’s mostly worth it, but you’ll be too distracted by the need to pee to pay attention to the last half hour.
In the third and probably final title in the Millennium Trilogy—there are rumours kicking around of a fourth that is mostly written, and that late author Stieg Larsson was intending to write ten—we pick up from where The Girl who Played with Fire ended. Feisty heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace, now ridiculously and deservedly famous) is in the emergency room in hospital after being shot in the head and hip and shoulder, her completely vile father Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov) is down the hall in a room with a Salander-inflicted axe wound to the head, and Lisbeth’s half-brother Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz)—the “blonde giant”, and someone who can’t feel pain—is on the run. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), journalist at Millennium magazine and champion of Salander’s cause, is doing the very best he can to save Lisbeth from the media storm worked up by the frenzied attacks at Zalachenko’s house, and the residual hype around her from the murders she was accused of in the second movie. Now she is accused of the attempted murder of her father, as well, an accusation aided by her attempted murder of him years earlier as a twelve-year-old defending her abused mother, and supported by master bastard doctor Peter Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom). Yes, it’s all very dramatic. And when it involves politicians from the very highest parts of Swedish society, it’s about as dramatic as you can get. And it makes the ending all the more delicious.
Most of Salander’s screentime is spent with her locked up—first in a hospital room, aided by her hot and all-round fantastic doctor Anders Jonasson (Aksel Morisse); then, in a jail cell; and finally, in a courtroom, assisted by Blomkvist’s pregnant lawyer sister Annika (Annika Giannini). We also follow Blomkvist, and the rest of the Millennium team, as they try to find links between Zalachenko and parliament, despite numerous death threats and Blomkvist’s single-minded approach. Along with the police, aided by Blomkvist, and the bad guys themselves, who basically sit around shitting their pants, we also have the displeasure of watching Niedermann’s grotesque escape route, as he kidnaps and harms everyone in his path.
I have a lot of goodwill for the books, and the brilliantly cast movies. And I enjoyed The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, and it was fabulous to see virtually everything wrapped up. You can’t help but get completely involved with Lisbeth Salander and want desperately to see her free from the horrific life she’s had to live through since she was a child. The movie has a very satisfying black-and-white way of looking at the world, where all the good people are wonderful (though Blomkvist makes some bad decisions, it is ultimately for a greater good) and all the bad people are snivelling monsters who deserve all they get.
Still, this movie was not without its flaws. The police force came across as completely incompetent—too slow-moving to defend against the lumbering Niedermann, unable to figure anything out without the help of a journo, and in one eye-bleedingly cheesy scene, driving along a pavement and almost hitting a woman wheeling a pram (a pram! Wasn’t that trope done and dusted after the bit in Speed where Sandra Bullock hits a pram and it’s full of cans?) Despite the time lapse between the start of the movie and the end—Lisbeth has brain surgery, grows her hair out, becomes stronger—Annika remains just as heavily pregnant throughout the entire film with no actual mention made of the fact that such an integral part of the team may burst into labour on the courtroom floor. If you haven’t seen the two previous movie, it’s really not worth seeing this one, as you’d spend most of it trying to remember what the hell is going on, what happened in the past, and who that middle-aged guy on screen is. Hell, I’ve read all the books and seen the movie and I still had trouble cottoning on sometimes. The courtroom aspect ends neatly but leaves you thinking, “Wait, what was the crime being discussed, and why, despite what just happened, was this the outcome?” It felt that often one little sentence was all that was needed to make a confusing aspect make sense. But they didn’t happen, and so I sometimes sat there with a perplexed look on my face dribbling my Pepsi out the side of my mouth. And seriously, I cannot state this enough: it’s too long.
I’ve mentioned this with the previous movies but it bears repeating: one of my favourite parts of these films is the casting, not just because they’re talented actors (they are), but because all the people are just so damn normal. Blomkvist is handsome—and I adore him—and has a mid-life belly and a rough-skinned face. Erika, his blonde and beautiful editor, wears the same clothes over all the movies and has wrinkles and fuzzy hair. Salander punks up for her courtroom scene in more silver jewellery than a Kmart full of teenagers, and doesn’t really make it sexy deliberately, even though she’s gorgeous. Everyone is just wonderful in their everyday way and it makes movies so much more believable when they are. Of course, they’re all speaking Swedish which just reminds you that American/Australian/British movies have a long way to come in this regard.
In Summary: Meets Expectations. A fine thriller with a dash of politics, a sprinkle of action, one and a half teaspoons of schadenfreude, and sixteen cups of length. It missed out on some parts of the books I was hoping for—the relationship between police officer Monica Figuerola and polyamorist Blomkvist, for one—but did a fairly good job of containing the important parts. May have made a better television series—ten episodes per book or something—and apparently were actually filmed as telemovies in Sweden anyway.
GIVEAWAY! Want to see this, but not sure enough to fork out full price on it? Well I have a handful of two-for-one passes for The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest valid Australia-wide, so if you’re keen, comment here about what you think the fourth book should be called, and if you’re lucky (chances are supremely high) I’ll send you one out!
I’ve been a bit lax on the reviewing front of late, but I have an excuse—Stieg Larsson. If I’m reading a 600-page Swedish novel I can’t be expected to even be thinking about anything else. This feeling was summed up nicely by a colleague today, who is in the midst of reading the same book: “I’m jealous that you’ve finished Hornets. It means you’ve got your life back!”
The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is book three in the Millennium Trilogy. In the book world, it’s been a phenomenon, creeping up towards Twilight/Harry Potter/Da Vinci Code territory, but with a much more interesting back story. Author Stieg Larsson wrote the three books in the trilogy but died of a heart attack at age fifty, just before the books were published and adored both in his native Sweden and internationally. There are rumours that Larsson, an investigative journalist like his male protagonist Mikael Blomkvist, was actually killed off due to his profession. I’m not sure whether this is true—though he almost certainly received death threats—or if it is a marketing ploy. Either way, he died young, and it’s sad. Because the Millennium Trilogy is a downright excellent series, and Larsson himself comes across as a genuinely bang-up guy.
It’s hard to review the last book in a series without in some way spoiling the contents of the others. But once you’ve read the blurb, you know two things: one, the main characters live through the first books; and two, they’re pissed. Book one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, felt in some ways like a locked-room Agatha Christie book: there was a crime on an island with no viable escape routes. Mikael Blomkvist is summoned, in the mysterious way that non-police detectives often are, to help solve this crime, now decades old. He’s happy to lie low after being jailed for libel after breaking an uncorroborated story, so he accepts the challenge. (Incidentally, Swedish prisons come across as luxury spa retreats.) Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, the most unlikely and therefore most fabulous heroine in the history of fiction, is just trying to survive in a world that conspires against her. Twenty-five years old, tattooed, pierced, skinny, and able to pass for a teenager, she hates everyone and with good reason. After having her mental state questioned all her life, she is given a guardian who uses his position to abuse her in a truly horrifying scene that literally made me break out into a sweat on the tram. Lisbeth is not the kind of person who lets such things go by unpunished, luckily, and her story, which becomes linked to Blomkvist’s, makes for fascinating reading. Book two, The Girl who Played with Fire, follows the two of them as they go their separate ways—Lisbeth to search out and avenge her childhood wrongs, and Blomkvist back to what he does best, exposing bad guys. The death of two of Blomkvist’s colleagues bring them together yet again as Salander is accused of all number of crimes, not least Looking Scary and Being Uncommunicative.
Knowing that the characters survive each book isn’t the same as knowing what condition they will be by the next one. Book three begins with Lisbeth in hospital, fiercely unwell and accused of some more crimes and barely metres from the man who is the reason for most of the crimes perpetrated against her. Blomkvist is out and about trying with all he has to get her vindicated and to expose the enormity of the situation that led to Lisbeth’s current state. This is not light reading, and while I’m generally a fast reader it’s because I skip through sentences and rush to the end of the page. The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest isn’t the kind of book you can do that in, so laden is it with Swedish politics from decades ago and countless new characters who are all equally important. While this may make it seem like hard work, it’s still an exciting thriller. One of Larsson’s best talents is to spend the first two-thirds of a book revealing the atrocities of humanity and then, in the final third, letting all the bad guys get their comeuppance.
But these aren’t simple spy thrillers. The most important part of these books is said by a character in Hornets: “When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” Lisbeth, along with her mother and many other females in the books—as well as in reality—are treated appallingly. If it takes a bestselling thriller to bring facts like these to light, so be it.
This may be the one flaw in the books—that some of the women suffer, others are brave and powerful, but I can’t recall any of them being a villain. Larsson isn’t denying the existence of them as such; they’re just not here, for these occasions.
I know this is a painfully long review—worse still, it’s my third draft—but I’m putting the effort in because they’re books worth reading. They’re not always pleasant, and sometimes very complex, but they are undoubtedly rewarding. With Larsson’s death, the trilogy is all we have of him. The third book ties up nicely, apart from one very very small loose end, which he could perhaps have followed through with in another story. We won’t know.
Sweden is ahead of us in making movies of the series (with all the characters looking wrong, ugh) but there are rumours going around—just rumours—that the person grabbing at the American film rights is young Mr Quentin Tarantino himself, purveyor of girl-power movies (Death Proof, anyone?) I believe he’ll do it justice, but you may as well grab a copy now and read it for yourself before the movie comes out, no?
