People don't come much more well-rounded than Lisbeth Salander. She can hack your computer with one hand, break your arm with the other. She can pleasure your body and mess up your mind. To use popular expressions, she's hard as nails, tough as a boot, quick as a wink, smart as a whip. She is, of course, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," third in the series from the novels by Stieg Larsson.
Once again, Noomi Rapace is Salander. She's not very pretty in the usual sense, and certainly less of a sex symbol than Rooney Mara will be in the American version; Rooney can be seen now as Mark Zuckerberg's girl friend in "The Social Network." But Rapace, with piercing dark eyes and a striking intensity, takes over the role that fits her like a bespoke suit. Even the piercings are apparently re-opened from her younger, Goth-like days.
We open on an immobilized Salander, in a hospital bed under police guard, charged with three murders and a variety of other crimes, including attempted murder on Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), who is in a bed just down the hall. Zalachenko is her father, a renegade Russian agent who has been working for an underground rump movement in Sweden.
"Hornet's Nest" may be a little long, but I found it gripping. Then again, I've been a fan since I read the first chapter of the first book. Larsson's detailed, convoluted story about bad things in bad places is brilliant, in my opinion. He keeps track of many people, some on the good side, some on the bad, a few moving back and forth across the narrow line that divides them. Toss in some sex and violence, a heroic newspaper man who is a whiz with the women, complex plotting and excellent characterizations, and you have a winner.
Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyquist) is the writer, the kind of man an adolescent dreamer like myself saw as my own future. He has protected Salander, and been her lover, and has used her as a source for all sorts of information on a looming scandal that will make his new magazine, Millennium, an instant hit. He decided to start his own when his former boss, and lover, Erika Berger (Lena Andre) left the magazine business for another job.
And while Salander is an expert hacker, she isn't invincible, but she has a friend who goes under the name of Plague (Tomas Kohler) and who decries his scruffy appearance with abilities that turn him into a hacker's hacker. He's a major source of information for Blomkvist.
Salander also has the opportunity for revenge against Dr. Peter Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl). Teleborian, a psychiatrist, managed to become Salander's guardian and had the 13-year-old girl committed to a hospital, then abused her in horrific manner. Any revenge she takes is not nearly enough. Larsson crosses his t's and dots his i's in a courtroom scene with Salander, her Mohawk higher than an elephant's eye, her Goth garb a strong fashion and political statement.
Larsson supposedly died right after he delivered the manuscripts to his publisher, which means that the Salander saga ends here, with the villains properly and completely punished. But there have been rumors of more manuscripts found in his computer, and of conflict between some of his family members and his girl friend. Though they had lived together for a number of years, they never married, which means she has no claim on his estate.
Irony always wins.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest opens today at the Plaza Frontenac and Tivoli
—Joe