Hanna (12A): Reviewed (From Your Local Guardian)

Hanna (12A): Reviewed

9:57pm Monday 2nd May 2011

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“I just missed your heart” are the first and last words uttered in this marvellous adventure thriller by Director Joe Wright. See?...you’re interested already.

Hanna is a 16-year old killing machine played with just the right amount of wonderment and naivety by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. Ok, let’s get this out the way right now, according to Miss Ronan it’s pronounced ‘Sur-shuh’. Hanna has been brought up in the wild woods of North Finland singlehandedly by her widowed Father Erik (Eric Bana) an ex-CIA agent who trains her in martial arts, armed combat and generally transforms her into the perfect assassin. At the same time her home education all seems to come from encyclopedias and traditional fairy tales. In her secluded life this is all normal as she has never had any physical contact with the outside world or with any other people.

Hanna knows that her training has been leading up to one moment, a moment soon approaching when she will be unleashed into the real world to extract revenge on the ‘wicked witch’ responsible for her Mother’s death.

The Witch in question is Marissa Viegler (Cate Blanchett) a ruthless CIA operative who once worked with Erik and has been obsessively searching for him and his daughter. On completion of her mission Erik arranges to rendezvous with Hanna in Berlin at a spooky abandoned fairy tale theme park, very Grimm (sorry). Hanna makes her way there via Morocco by hitching a lift with a new age English family in their hippy VW Dormobile. Saoirse Ronan’s acting talents really shine here as this is Hanna’s first experience with a real life family. She may just as well be an Alien from another planet as she has no point of reference to compare them with and she exudes a child like quality but at the same time could snap your neck like a twig. The Mother and Father (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) are very liberal parents but show concern that Hanna is travelling around the world on her own. Hanna strikes up a touching relationship with their daughter Sophie (Jessica Barden, last seen upstaging Gemma Arterton in Tamara Drewe) who teaches Hanna about life through her knowledge of ‘Entertainment Now’ and ‘Hello’ magazine.

Any of you who listen to our ‘Movie Ramblings’ podcast will know that I’m not a great fan of the current never ending list of movie remakes and that’s one reason why this film appealed to me as an original story. The only similarity Hanna has to any other movie character is probably Chloe Moretz ‘Hit-Girl’ from Kick-Ass but minus the potty-mouth!

The chase scenes and fight sequences are superbly choreographed with brutal realism rather than the usual overused slo-mo bullet time acrobatics. Hot on Hanna’s trail is rogue executioner Isaacs hired by Marissa through unofficial channels. Isaacs is played by English actor Tom Hollander as you’ve never seen him before, complete with bleached hair and a Nazi accent…oh! And an awful eighties fashion sense. Cate Blanchett plays Marissa as a cold and ruthless character who won’t let anything stand in her way. The only thing I had a problem with was her annoying American accent that seemed to start in the Deep South and then take a detour through several US states.

It’s always good to see the versatile Eric Bana but I feel that he was slightly under used here and he almost plays the same angst ridden character straight from the film Munich.

I find it amazing that Joe Wright has only ever made three other movies, Pride & Prejudice (2005), nominated for 4 Oscars, Atonement (2007), winning an Oscar for best original score and The Soloist (2009). However, the latter seemed to pass unnoticed due to the production studio not wanting to spend any money on marketing The Soloist due to the fact that it was putting it all into promoting the launch of the bigger budgeted Benjamin Button. Despite this, Hollywood seemed confident that Wright could turn his hands to the thriller genre and I think he does a pretty good job with a kind of Bourne meets Leon angle. He also throws in a thumping good Chemical Brothers soundtrack.

Although I enjoyed the film it seemed to end all too soon and I felt that there were one or two things left unexplained. Perhaps part of the reason may have been because Universal changed the certification from the original 15 to a 12A? Having said all that I still put this down as my film of the year so far.

I give it an ‘edge of the seat’ four out of five.