THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB (15)
★★★★★
ALMOST a decade after Noomi Rapace took on the role of emotionally damaged hacker Lisbeth Salander, The Crown actress Claire Foy becomes the third actress (after Rooney Mara in 2011) to wage war on abusive men as Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s avenging angel.
Adapted from the fourth book in the Millennium series, which was penned by David Lagercrantz after Larsson’s death, The Girl In The Spider’s Web sees computer scientist Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) hire Lisbeth to gain illegal access to the servers of the National Security Agency (NSA) and steal his Firefall application. Lisbeth’s actions attract the attention of NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), who travels to Sweden to retrieve the stolen software and bring the hacker to justice.
The theft is complicated when masked assailants storm Lisbeth’s hi-tech lair and leave her for dead.
The bruised heroine re-establishes contact with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) who exploits personal connections to the deputy director of Swedish National Security, to identify the attackers.
Lisbeth follows a trail of evidence and realises that the brilliant mind of Balder’s autistic son August (Christopher Convery) is the key to cracking the case.
The Girl In The Spider’s Web is a slickly executed thriller-by-numbers, that resuscitates the franchise with a whimper rather than a bang.