HANNA

Sunday

April 10, 2011

HANNA (2011) Okay, let’s be upfront about this, get our cards on the table. I’m a huge fan of girls with guns, I can’t help myself; I just love 'em!  Whether it's the Japanese graphic novel Gunslinger Girls, Natalie Portman in The Professional, or a gun toting Dakota Fanning in Push.  Most recently we were treated to the titular pint-sized foul mouth assassin Chloe Moretz in Kick Ass.  I think it’s safe to say that Hanna will join the pantheon of my favorite tough-girl films.

     Saorise Rohan is Hanna a 16-year-old girl raised in the wild arctic tundra of Finland by her "father" (Eric Bana) an ex-CIA agent.  Trained to be the perfect assassin, young Hanna is sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna cuts a swath of dead bodies across Europe all the while eluding agents dispatched after her by a shadowy ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Cate Blanchett).

      This is Bourne Supremacy meets the brother's Grimm fairy tales, an intense techno-action fable about a teenage girl groomed to be the ultimate assassin. The plot is confusing at times and not enough is explained which makes the whole chase sequences a lot less interesting. Even after the end of the film I still had questions as to the story and the reasons why things happened. There are some obvious plot holes, why does Eric Bana have a big red button, and why does Hanna feel compelled to push it?

     Some of the bad guys have a tendency to spend far more time brushing their teeth and cackling about how "evil" they are than they do developing character.  It seems the bad guys profess far more malevolent vengeance than the thin plot can justify. For her own part, Hanna is capable of bring down a bull moose with a bow and arrow, yet she is naive and sheltered, she's never seen an electric kettle or a ceiling fan, nonetheless, at one point in the film she effortless sits down to a computer and easily Goggles her way into solving the story’s central mystery. These kids now days . . . At this point I gave up trying to keep track of the plot and spent more time wondered, just what in the Sam Hill is going on here?   That’s not to say Hanna is not entertaining, there’s one pulse-pounding chase sequence through a maze of air shafts of a military installation . . . note to self, next time when designing impregnable underground military installation, do not install random unguarded manhole cover.  There is another pursuit through an impossible jumble of shipping containers, owing much of its excitement less to the compelling plot, and more to the pounding beat of the Chemical Bros. techno, trip-hop electronic soundtrack.

     Joe Wright (Atonement) makes very good character-driven movies that are often visually stunning.  This movie is interesting in the way it was filmed. There are parts which seem more like a music video, and then other moments that are sensitive and unexpected. 
      More than a few people have devoted far more time than they should to conjuring up or otherwise fabricating a non-existent rivalry between Dakota Fanning and Saorise Rohan.  I for one don't see the connection, what is clear to me is why Joe Wright chose to work with Rohan again.  Rohan is an absolute star!  This girl has a face the camera loves, with stunning blue eyes and a smattering of girlish freckles,  Saorise is beautiful in that "girl-next-door" sort of way——she possesses a charisma and worldly-wise magnetism that transcends her scant sixteen years.

HANNA (2011) **1/2