Movie Review: ‘HANNA’

Hanna is the new film by director Joe Wright.  I’ll admit that his previous films haven’t really been up my alley nor would they ever be covered on this site.  So, when I got wind that the director of Pride and Prejudice and Atonement would be directing an action movie featuring a 16 year old girl who has been trained by her assassin father, I was immediately excited to check out what could come of this.

Saoirse Ronan plays the title character of Hanna who lives in a snowy landscape with her assassin father Erik (Eric Bana).  Erik is training Hanna to become a great assassin.  For what, we really don’t know.  Until one day, Erik digs up a container that contains a switch that, once toggled, will divulge their location to an enemy threat.  The enemy threat is a woman named Marissa (Cate Blanchett).  The switch is flicked and the adventure begins.

Four months into 2011 and I think I will remember this film for years to come.  Hanna is not just another film featuring action sequences and a kickass kid, it is way more.  Hanna is the definition of how a collaboration of all aspects of filmmaking can come together and really knock one out of the park.

One thing, out of the many things, I love about this film is how the score by The Chemical Brothers isn’t just laid on top of the film, it actually integrates itself into the film and with the film’s rhythmic sound effects so well that it almost doesn’t feel like a score at all. Featuring fights choreography and stunts coordination from the great Jeff Imada, director Joe Wright actually doesn’t waste all of Imada’s work with fast cuts.  Wright keeps the camera steady and at times includes the fight scenes with one take. The cinematography is gorgeous as the film ventures around the world and to distant lands that mainstream America might not have seen in sometime on film.

My only complaint was, believe it or not, Cate Blanchett.  She tried to have a southern twang to her voice but at times she would lay it on too thick or not have it at all.  Plus, I believe she gets upstaged by Tom Hollander, who plays a villian named Issacs.  Issacs is defintely one of those villians that is a little off.  He constantly whistles a melody that is infectious that I caught myself whistling it throughout the week.  Once I thought about it, I figured that some people that see the film might think of me as a creepy dude.  Issacs could have been played over-the-top but Hollander shows enough control of the character that his creepiness isn’t beat over our head.

 This was my first film seeing actress Saoirse Ronan, but I sure as hell hope it won’t be my last.  She pulls off the many attributes her character needs to in order to be believable.  Early on in the film she is calculated and on a warpath but after she thinks her mission is through (which is pretty much the first 40 or so minutes of the film), we are treated to her trying to become human.  You can only imagine what happened in the prior months of her last stretch of her training with her father.  What you do realize is that once she is given the chance of freedom and to explore her nature and, to be frank, to learn how to be a child, the experiences and discoveries that she goes through are almost as thrilling as her precise assassin training.

After the film was over, I said it would be a great feature with Wayne Kramer’s film Running Scared.  As both of the films use the background of Grimm’s fairy tales and incorporate them into an original tale.  While Kramer laid it on a bit more thickly than Wright does with Hanna, I still think that thematically they play off of each other quite well.

Hanna isn’t just an action film, it is much more as it reinvents the modern action film.  I know that we are only 4 months in to 2011, but I honestly think this will be one of those films that will be the highlight of the year for me.  I highly recommend you go see this flick in the theater as it should be played in a loud volume to fully immerse yourself in its environment.