by Morgan P Salvo
Director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride &; Prejudice, The Soloist) has now helmed an action pic. He knows how to make a film look good with actors emoting all over the place but somehow plays it too safe by the end. Sure, he puts all the pieces together in a visually stunning way with equal parts action and story but there’s still something hollow at the core of Hanna.
Right off the bat we’re introduced to the action with father (Eric Bana) and daughter Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) practicing fighting skills in some remote snowy region. And these are no run of the mill skills; they are down and dirty combat survival kill-or-be-killed tactics. She’s being trained for a mission to kill a cunning intelligence operative (Cate Blanchett) who also has been expecting her for years. Hanna sets out across Europe and through a myriad of adventures discovers some secrets about her past. This is the teenage Spy Who Came in From the Cold.Hanna’s initial revenge set up seems too simple and the twists are divulged mostly through conversation in between the running, fighting, and killing. Through her diligence Hanna proves her mettle. There’s an underlying fairy tell here with the Wicked Witch and Snow White but its plundered aside by all the action.
Hanna’s seclusion from the real world has her quest unravel in new world wonderment which brings a nice touch to Ronan’s (Lovely Bones, The Way Back & Atonement) acting style. Ronan displays intelligence through innocent ignorance. Her fascination of her surroundings, people and music is perfectly fused with her primal bewilderment of how little she truly understands the modern world. Bana (Troy, Munich) is convincing as caring super-spy Dad. Blanchett has a lot of diabolical fun being the wicked witch/evil agent. Tom Hollander is amusing as the gay head-honcho hit-man wearing tennis outfits while leading his duo of skinhead rockers in a kind of a three stooges pursuit of Hanna.Everyone affects some sort of bizarre European accent and oddly enough Blanchett adopts a southern drawl
There are some crowd pleasing lines like when Hanna is asked “What did you mother die from”, her response is “Three Bullets”. Speaking of gunplay there is a somewhat high body count in this flick.Hanna has some nice quiet moments alongside blood pumping action assisted by the Chemical Brothers’ reliable soundtrack. Meanwhile Wright gives us an arty light show incorporating crazy camera tricks and shots from every possible angle.
There’s one gigantic glaring unexplained error that really takes you out of the moment. After a scene depicting Hanna’s overreaction to a TV by asking “What’s that?” Later we see this lethal fighting bundle of doom in a Berlin mall typing away at a computer learning about her DNA .Where did these mad skills come from? She certainly didn’t take any computer courses while dodging bullets.
There’s a sequence near the end that takes place in an abandoned amusement park with decaying dinosaur statues that looks like it could’ve been shot down highway 97 at Chiloquin’s now defunct Thunderbeast Park but Hanna was Shot in Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, the oldest large-scale film studio in the world and Hanna gets extra points for being European When all is said and done, this flick is a mixture of sci-fi meets morality play sucked into the vortex of action/espionage yarn. Hanna delivers the goods but with all its finesse somehow wallows too often in its own self awareness.
Hanna
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander
Director: Joe Wright
Rated P-G 13
2 ½ stars
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