The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes - 2009)

This brings the trilogy of the girl with the dragon tattoo to a satisfying conclusion and anyone who liked the first two will be seeing this one. With less violence than the others, just as much suspense, and similarly long (2:28), part three is intriguing, and our heroine gets a new look (it's easy to guess after what event she does her makeover). I suspect they were all shot one after another because the release dates were so close -- less than a year for all three in each country, starting with Denmark in each case, perhaps due to star Noomi Rapace's being Danish. She is still terrific as hard-as-nails heroine Lisbeth Salander. After the three movies came out, longer versions were released as a six part Swedish TV series called Millennium, which is both the name of the late Stieg Larsson's trilogy and the name of the magazine published by Mikael Blomkvist in the stories. Here, someone deconstructs the differences between the movies and the series. I haven't read any of Larsson's books on which the series was based, so I can't comment (I couldn't get past the first few dozen pages and put it away when I found out it was going to be a movie). Swedish director Daniel Alfredson takes the reins on this one as he did on the second, and cast his father Hans Alfredson in a small part as Gullberg. The Swedish title, Luftslottet som sprängdes, literally means "the air castle that was blown up," but some say it would translate idiomatically to "pie in the sky."

My recommendation is to watch part one, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2:32 long), on your computer or xbox on netflix, then follow it with part two, The Girl Who Played With Fire (2:09), either instantly or on DVD, then get down to your local art theatre and see the last one on the big screen. If you choose to see this one all by itself, you should know one fact from before that the filmmakers left out: the character of Ronald Niedermann, the "blond giant," is unable to feel pain (to describe who he is in greater detail would be a spoiler for the middle movie). As I said in my post on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the trilogy is being remade in English with an all-star cast. Still, you should see the originals.