Film Review: Hanna

Hanna is the latest chase thriller from British director Joe Wright (The Soloist, Atonement), and showcases the burgeoning talent of the beautiful Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones). However, with a strong visual style that boldly attempts to fuse frenetic action with both gritty realism and at times, a dreamy surrealism, the result is a fairytale/action mash-up that despite solid performances by Ronan, Blanchett and Bana, always feels on the brink of collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a hardened 16 year old with an extraordinary set of skills. Raised and educated by her widowed father Erik (Eric Bana) in the frozen tundra of northern Finland, Hanna’s schooling is comprised primarily of hunting, weapons training, combat tactics and the art of war. A book of fairytales is her only escape from this strict tutelage. As they survive ‘off grid’, ex-CIA operative Erik moulds his daughter into the ultimate assassin as the time finally approaches to unleash vengeance on their unsuspecting enemies.

This film left me with such a mixed reaction. I have to admit that on first leaving the cinema, I was quite amped at what I’d just seen. There’s something exhilarating about a young girl kicking major sphincter (probably none moreso than Kick-Ass's Chloe Moretz as the deadly ‘Mindy’). But as I drove home in the car and thought back on the adventure as a whole, I had a hard time recalling any of the finer plot points other than the central narrative. And then it dawned on me. To quote John Cleese as Mr Creosote’s famous Maître d’, the story was, in the purest terms, “only waffer thin!”

On reflection, it seems that in an attempt to cram the runtime with as much action and surrealism as possible, Wright has had to trade off story and character depth in exchange. So, for a film that basically has three main characters that we actively follow, we barely even get to know two of them. Only Hanna is intimately explored on more than a superficial level and even then, particularly in the case of the family she meets and travels with, the situations were just not mined for their true potential. Blanchett, as the cold blooded CIA agent Marissa, is given very little backstory and we don’t even find out how she really fits in until about three quarters of the way through the film. I've said it before, but if we don’t know who the bad guy really is, what motivates them and most importantly, how far they are willing to go to get what they want, how can we feel that Hanna’s life is truly threatened when they interact? Ultimately, by skimming only the surface of vital characters, the director has unknowingly lowered the stakes and raised our indifference to the antagonist.

So if it had such a flimsy story, I hear you say, why so pumped at the end? Aha, I retort! Because the visual styling and Ronan’s superb acting do a 'Houdini-esque' job in masking the minimalist story. I cannot speak highly enough of Ronan – she is a real talent. And to give them credit, Blanchett and Bana also manage to squeeze a lot more out of their characters than (it appears) was written on the page. Understated as usual, Blanchett is fascinating in her coldness, which is why I am so disappointed that they didn’t use her theatrical abilities to give a more rounded exploration of her character. However, it has to be said that the blonde, East German CIA assassin in the 80’s tracksuit played by Tom Hollander (Pirates 2 & 3) was such an awful cliché that I almost wanted to get up out of my seat, fly to L.A. and slap the writer hard for penning such an awful, awful character. Thank god he was only on screen for a short time.

The other element that really helps to distract from the plotless-ness is the strength of imagery. For all its shortcomings, one thing that this film manages to do well is set a specific visual tone and follow it right through to the end. There’s a bleak, plastic-y fairytale aspect to this film that definitely made it feel fresh when compared to similar films of this genre. The type of action sequences used and the very art-house cinematic design definitely meshed with effect and again, did go some way to hide the superficial storyline.

On a final and disappointing note though, the score by the Chemical Brothers was average and rather forgettable.

So, as a cinema junkie who demands a well written and highly developed story above all other filmmaking components to truly enjoy a movie, I was ultimately let down by the flimsiness of Hanna. For a film to succeed, the screenplay must provide the solid, supporting framework on top of which the action can be stacked, without buckling. In the case of Hanna, the legs simply quivered too many times. Had they have just fleshed out the characters a little more and added an extra subplot or two, this could have really been a classic action thriller. 

However, when all is said and done, the action sequences and acting ability of Ronan/Blanchett ultimately do help to bring Hanna back up a notch toward respectability.

2 & 1/2 STARS