dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
"A word of caution. Ordinarily, a film review submitted for general perusal would not be so laden with names, facts and plot points. Please don't worry about spoilers; everything I am about to impart to you occurs well within the first 20 minutes of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, the final cinematic dispatch from the Lisbeth Salander dossier. Nevertheless, forces are mobilizing to ensure this information never sees the light of day. And so I must forgo protocols and cast this knowledge into the void. The vicious truth must be revealed! For purposes of eluding detection, I have included some "false facts," which I invite you to suss out in the course of your investigation.
Picking up immediately from a cliffhanger in The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second film in the "Millennium" trilogy, Hornets' Nest begins with antisocial punkette-hacker-autist Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) recovering from brain surgery to remove a bullet. Elsewhere, in the same Swedish hospital, lies her ex-Soviet mercenary dad, Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), whose hair she just parted with an ax. Upon recovery, Salander will face triple-murder charges — unless her old friend, investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) works overtime to clear her name.
To do so, he must use a massive secret psych file, obtained through illicit means, called the Björck Report. (It involves neither Lars von Trier nor a swan.) Meanwhile, deep in their underground fortresses of doom — no, this is not the made-up part — the old Swedish men in suits who represent Evil Inc. are busy trying to lock up Lisbeth in St. Stephen's, a mental hospital that makes the joint in Shutter Island look like the Dubai Ritz-Carlton. To accomplish this, they must set about destroying all existing copies of the report — preferably in the manner of Scary Gentleman No. 3, who is seen early in the film ceremoniously throwing the report into the fireplace, one page at a time.
Mwa-ha-ha! Alas, there's a complication, because Zalachenko's henchman Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz) is on the loose and unaccounted for. He's a wild card, and this worries the Underground League of Old Swedish Men. Did we mention that he also happens to be Lisbeth's half-brother? No matter. These are men who will stop at nothing, because in the words of their leader, a man with the somewhat presidential moniker of Fredrik Clinton, "We do what the others don't dare to. Least of all the politicians."
Then come the hell-bent biker gang, the phantom hacker and the sibling snipers dispatched by the Spies of the Great Patriarchy. But they haven't counted on Salander and Blomkvist teaming up with rock musician / master safecracker Blïster Holmstaedt (Yngwie Malmsteen), who discovers a 19th century arpeggio pattern in which Zalachenko's billionaire father encoded the coordinates for a hidden radar signal — which, when tuned to the proper frequency, can activate a dormant chip in the cerebral cortex of all living Salander women, allowing them access to total sensory recall. During the climactic courtroom sequence, the still-recovering Lisbeth is able to provide not only startling testimony on her own behalf, but also damning memories about how the presiding judge in the case, the Hon. Ivor Herbstschnitt (Hans Blix), actually molested 7-year-old Lisbeth's hamster during a family game of Parcheesi."
Hee hee
Picking up immediately from a cliffhanger in The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second film in the "Millennium" trilogy, Hornets' Nest begins with antisocial punkette-hacker-autist Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) recovering from brain surgery to remove a bullet. Elsewhere, in the same Swedish hospital, lies her ex-Soviet mercenary dad, Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), whose hair she just parted with an ax. Upon recovery, Salander will face triple-murder charges — unless her old friend, investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) works overtime to clear her name.
To do so, he must use a massive secret psych file, obtained through illicit means, called the Björck Report. (It involves neither Lars von Trier nor a swan.) Meanwhile, deep in their underground fortresses of doom — no, this is not the made-up part — the old Swedish men in suits who represent Evil Inc. are busy trying to lock up Lisbeth in St. Stephen's, a mental hospital that makes the joint in Shutter Island look like the Dubai Ritz-Carlton. To accomplish this, they must set about destroying all existing copies of the report — preferably in the manner of Scary Gentleman No. 3, who is seen early in the film ceremoniously throwing the report into the fireplace, one page at a time.
Mwa-ha-ha! Alas, there's a complication, because Zalachenko's henchman Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz) is on the loose and unaccounted for. He's a wild card, and this worries the Underground League of Old Swedish Men. Did we mention that he also happens to be Lisbeth's half-brother? No matter. These are men who will stop at nothing, because in the words of their leader, a man with the somewhat presidential moniker of Fredrik Clinton, "We do what the others don't dare to. Least of all the politicians."
Then come the hell-bent biker gang, the phantom hacker and the sibling snipers dispatched by the Spies of the Great Patriarchy. But they haven't counted on Salander and Blomkvist teaming up with rock musician / master safecracker Blïster Holmstaedt (Yngwie Malmsteen), who discovers a 19th century arpeggio pattern in which Zalachenko's billionaire father encoded the coordinates for a hidden radar signal — which, when tuned to the proper frequency, can activate a dormant chip in the cerebral cortex of all living Salander women, allowing them access to total sensory recall. During the climactic courtroom sequence, the still-recovering Lisbeth is able to provide not only startling testimony on her own behalf, but also damning memories about how the presiding judge in the case, the Hon. Ivor Herbstschnitt (Hans Blix), actually molested 7-year-old Lisbeth's hamster during a family game of Parcheesi."
Hee hee
