The Thousands

By the third instalment of the Millennium trilogy, the limitations of faithful literary adaptation are becoming clear. In a book, it doesn’t matter so much that the protagonist spends most of her time mutely in a hospital bed, a jail cell or a courtroom. And it’s a credit to Noomi Rapace (and her epic cheekbones) that Lisbeth Salander remains intriguing despite having so little to do.

Despite omitting several major subplots from Stieg Larsson’s novel, Daniel Alfredson’s movie is almost two-and-a-half hours long and seems to last fuh-evah. Indefatigable Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) works with the police to clear Lisbeth’s name and unmask the shadowy black-ops agency that enabled her abuse. Meanwhile, Millennium publisher Erika Berger (Lena Endre) endures anonymous death threats.

If the first instalment was a whodunit and the second a political conspiracy, Hornets’ Nest is basically a legal drama. Annika Hallin gets the meatiest role as Blomkvist’s domestic-violence lawyer sister Annika. It’s a shame Rapace and Nyqvist are again kept apart – their chemistry was the trilogy’s best asset. Unfortunately, their final scene here is so perplexingly anticlimactic that it has you longing for the masterful trilogy-ending power of the Ewoks’ “Yub nub” song.