The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest

Within the past week I have finished my twelve-month Critical Care medical job in the country, passed my Viva exam, packed up and moved back to town, started a new part-time job as a university tutor and started catching up on my voluntary work as a Ski Patrol educator.

Last night I attended a charity screening of the film of the third book in the Stieg Larsson 'Millenium' trilogy - "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest". I haven't had time to read the book yet, but the film is definitely the best of the three. It certainly helps to have either seen the previous two ("The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl Who Played with Fire") or read the books in order to have the background to the story, but it is probably not essential. Mostly shot under dark and gloomy skies during Autumn, there is plenty of intensity and pace, and the musical score often mirrors that of a horror movie. During a couple of key moments of climax it makes you jump in your seat. The plot is very clever, bringing all the loose ends together with some interesting twists and turns, and justice more or less prevails in the end, with some murky ethical choices aiding its arrival. I was able to recognise streetscapes from Gothenberg and Stockholm and from my own experiences could appreciate the brooding darkness of the apartment building porticos and stairwells. As always, the quixotic Salander does what she needs to in order to survive but remains a deeply flawed heroine, and it would not surprise me if she suffers from Asperger Syndrome. I could understand a reasonable amount of the Swedish, and the subtitles were fairly faithful to the script, but the occasional subtlety was glossed over. All the characters are very human, warts and all, and one of the great strengths of the trilogy is that the key roles are played by very ordinary looking actors, making it all the more believable. It is not your typical Hollywood 'beautiful people' undertaking. Although there is a Hollywood version of the first book in the offing, I cannot imagine that it will be as good as the Swedish version, just as was the case when the original Kurt Wallander Swedish crime series was remade with English actors - it just didn't work as they could not recreate the inherent sense of 'Swedishness' that comes from the combination of language, culture and stereotypical facial appearances. 'The Eagle' was another fine Scandinavian crime series, and it is a pity that the writers chose to end it after a limited number of episodes.