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90The good news is that Alfredson finds his footing in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and delivers a rousing, grueling, almost operatically scaled finale to the series.
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90Rapace moves through the escalating exposure with a series of subtle shifts that are both painful and exquisite to watch. The actress can make eye contact seem like salt in an open wound.
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83For the initiated, however, Alfredson weaves a tidy web from loose ends left dangling.
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80A pick-up after the second film, if not as assured as the first. Rapace sets a high watermark for Rooney Mara in David Fincher's remakes.
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80The movie features a great finish, where three movies' worth of subplots and characters dovetail into a breathtaking climax and final confrontation that is positively soul satisfying.
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75This mismatched "couple" - have made, over the course of three long subtitled Swedish thrillers, the most dynamic duo of recent cinema history.
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75In some ways, better than its book.
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75For the most part, plays like a pretty good TV police procedural.
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75"Hornet's Nest" isn't the best of the three (that would be the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), but it's the most challenging.
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75The final, deeply satisfying conclusion to the trilogy of Swedish thrillers based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novels.
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75Hornet's Nest is talky but indisputably terrific, and it ends in a dazzling display of courtroom fireworks. Rapace is hot stuff in any language. Oscar, take heed.
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75So what has happened is that this uptight, ferocious, little gamin Lisbeth has won our hearts, and we care about these stories and think there had better be more.
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75An entertaining thriller. That said, it's the weakest of the films, falling a length or two behind "The Girl Who Played with Fire," and considerably more than that with respect to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
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70Mr. Alfredson directed the second movie as well, and his work is again essentially functional, limited to clumsy action sequences and television-ready conversations. He doesn't prettify the violence in either movie, which might be unintentional but makes them feel more honest than the first did.
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70Once Lisbeth has her day in court, though, the buildup pays off and then some.
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70In place of romance there are numerous talky espionage scenes that make the movie feel like one of those labyrinthine cold war pictures from the 60s.
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Oct 24, 201070Benefits from edge-of-your-seat pacing despite a conspicuous lack of action.
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63Mostly The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest belongs to Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), the tall and intrepid magazine journalist who is determined to clear Lisbeth's name, and who goes about doing so - and making espresso and checking his e-mail - with zeal.
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63Larsson's leading characters have less to do in this wrap-up chapter. As Larsson wrote it and screenwriter and exposition-condenser Ulf Rydberg adapted it, it's a rather wobbly blend of courtroom drama and loose ends tied, albeit rather leisurely.
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58It's rarely tedious, but it's also rarely insightful or propulsive, and since there's nothing new to discover about the characters or their world, much of the film feels like a protracted, contrived pause, as everyone waits for Rapace to finally get back into the game.
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50Sorry, this one doesn't really work at all, but don't blame the workers.
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50The Swedish edition, which ends with this bleak finale, is downright grim.
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50Has such dull patches that as a Volvo races to the scene of a massive shootout, a distracting thought comes to mind: Can Volvos even go that fast?
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50This native send-off is robotic enough to leave you eager to see what an artist might do with a reboot.
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50Mostly an epic rehash of the tale Larsson has already told, and that makes it, at two hours and 28 minutes, the first movie in the series that never catches fire.
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50Like the first two Millennium movies, this final installment feels thoughtlessly put together, its script unpruned and rushed through, all to capitalize on the staggering worldwide popularity of its dead author.
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50Larsson is renowned for his attention to marginal details, which gives his prose a rambling, one-thing-after-another pace that many readers find soothing. Onscreen, the lack of acceleration makes for one of those long Scandinavian winter nights.
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40Hornet's Nest is filled with boring, not-great-looking white guys, talking - a lot.
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40This can't be a faithful facsimile of the literary phenomenon currently turning soccer moms into Scandinoir crackheads. Nor can ethical journalist Mikael (Nyqvist), an uncoverer of conspiracies, actually be the dull, Windbreakered nonaction hero onscreen.
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Oct 29, 201030Fans will presumably get what they came for; what anyone else gets out of it is hard to say.
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25If Swedish villains are this dumb, put me on the next plane to Stockholm. Just don't make me watch these idiotic movies on the flight.