Daniel Alfredson

The third part of the Millenium trilogy comes with many titles. The original title translates as “the air castle that blew”, but the English title is “the girl that kicked the hornet’s nest”. The Dutch title means simply “justice”, the German title “forgiveness” and the French title translates to something like “the queen in the normal air castle”. However we again got the theatrical version, the film is quite a bit longer than the previous two. It is also a more interesting part than the second one and whereas you can watch parts one and two as separate films, there is no need to watch the last part without having seen two, since it simply starts off where two stopped. Part three holds the middle between a thriller and a law thriller, since the larger part of this last film is about the court hearings of Lisbeth who has been framed for a couple of murders in part two and fears to be taken back in by the system that corrupted her in the first place.
“Luftslottet Som Sprängdes” makes a descent closing of an alright trilogy. I am not entirely sure why this trilogy became so popular. Perhaps because the books were? The films are certainly entertaining, but no masterpieces, not even on the scale of Swedish film. They are certainly no waste of time though and recommended to people who enjoy Scandianvian crime thrillers.

The second part of the Millenium trilogy is not of the same director as “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo“. Also this time this Swedish film seems to leave out essential information from the story. I wonder if that is because the DVD that I rented says: “theatrical version” and is about half an hour shorther than I thought that these Millenium films are. For a reason unclear to me, Lisbeth returns to Sweden after having spent a year and a half abroad. Perhaps it is to revitalise her message to her curator, but her preparations are way overdone for that small thing. The Millenium newspaper finds another scandal and again for a reason unknown to me, Lisbeth gets connected to this scandal without her knowing. I can guess how that came to be, but also that would be way too much effort. The story is not as interesting as of the first part, but we learn a lot more about Lisbeth and with the title of this film and the international title of the first, Lisbeth seems to be the focal character of the trilogy. “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is more typical for a Swedish crime film. Not as entertaining as part one and certainly not as entertaining as the American version of part one, but not a boring film either. On to part three.