HANNA (PG13)
Release Date: 21 July 2011
Running Time: 111 minutes
Distributor: Sony Pictures, Focus Features
Director: Joe Wright
Screenplay: David Farr and Seth Lochhead
Starring: Eric Bana, Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Olivia Williams, Tom Hollander
Plot: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is 16 years old. She is bright, inquisitive, and a devoted daughter. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a soldier; these come from being raised by her widowed father Erik (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of North Finland. Erik has taught Hanna to hunt, put her through extreme self-defense workouts, and home-schooled her with only an encyclopedia and a book of fairy tales. Hanna has been living a life unlike any other teenager; her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. But out in the world there is unfinished business for Hanna's family, and it is with a combination of pride and apprehension that Erik realizes his daughter can no longer be held back.
Review: Government agency always comes with a dirty secret that they would like to dispose. Super solider program, artificial intelligence and spy hacking are not really new in the current world of Hollywood model to establish a thriller movie about someone trying to take down the whole agency for getting rid of them somehow or possibly tormenting their past life for good. There are people who will never stop at anything to go against these questionable secrets and we know Hollywood can do best of it when it comes to this. Move aside everyone. Here comes Hanna, an energetic but cold in heart young assassin who will come to answer the unspeakable challenge to take down CIA single-handedly just like what and how Jason Bourne and Evelyn Salt did in the past. Hit after the jump for more.
Hanna Heller (Saoirse Ronan) is a 15-year-old girl who lives with her father, Erik Heller (Eric Bana) in the wilderness of Finland; surviving through animal hunting and studying through a rich compilation of knowledge encyclopedia about the world so secluded from Hanna. Every since she was two years old, Erik who is himself an ex-CIA agent, has trained Hanna to become an assassin. The training he provided for his young daughter comes with a goal to eliminate some key person in within the CIA but also enclosed her far away from outside world and modern technology – filling her particular details with a series of fake back story that deemed handy when time comes.
One night, Hanna tells Erik that she is ‘ready’ to face the world and to hunt the person who was responsible of killing her mother when she was young. After alerting the CIA about her presence, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), a corrupt CIA agent sends a team to Erik’s cabin to retrieve Hanna and is taken to a safe house in Morocco. Unconvinced by her ‘sweet’ appearance and the way she was captured, Marissa sends a double to speak with Hanna but instead Hanna kills the double, breaks free and escapes into the outside world. Hanna with a difficulty to adapt the surrounding then meets a stranger family at the Moroccan desert.
‘Hanna’ comes with a surprising package of fun deliverance and some calamity experience of trying to keep up. The plot story of this movie may come in too convoluted or too complex for some because of the way it is presented by director Joe Wright feels unorthodox. Not really if you know Joe Wright, the director who brought you Pride and Prejudice and Atonement once. Wright has a tendency of never let things go straight-forward and for that there are gaps in the movie that requires you to fill it in throughout the movie. In other words, Hanna is very much a movie that tests your patience on its story revelation. It comes in pretty slow and at times, you might get yourself pretty much lost. There are several times during the movie, I do fail to keep up on certain details or the whereabouts of the plot direction, albeit not a true struggle that makes you murk in anger. It comes towards an uneasy observation that ‘Hanna’ is been over-the-top and genuinely illogical at times.
The package is surprisingly fun and energetic on the way they handle the action sequences. Three great elements that form the packages are the camera work, the action choreography and the score. Generally, rotating and panning camera shots are tiring to watch but in “Hanna’, these shots somehow effectively bring in exotic and amazingly choreographed fighting scenes. Instead of rotating around the setting and several angle changes, the camera shot constantly keeps up with the movement of the actors to provide a centered scene that revolves around the action. If the plot of this movie comes too heavy to follow, I can assure you that the actions would not because of the brilliant engagement on the hand-to-hand fighting choreograph. The music score courtesy of The Chemical Brothers are additive compliment to those elements while providing a techno-feel of excitement throughout the movie. If the score is not brilliant and flaring, I wonder if you are deaf! The scenes when Hanna escaping the CIA facility in Morocco and when Erik engaging a bunch of tail-doves in the subway are the two prime examples of this excellent works.
The other component that feels satisfying throughout the movie is the acting department. Saoirse Ronan is the new generation of actress that constantly performs above the movie itself. Despite her coldness and innocence appearance, her top-notch performance balances out with a merciless killing machine enraging for revenge. I guess it would make sense that she is good if she is given a bizarre characters (remember her weirdo moments in The Lovely Bones and Atonement?). Cate Blanchett’s portrayal as a villain is engaging while Eric Bana’s father portrayal is essentially strong. In the nutshell, ‘Hanna’ embodies a very difficult but highly smart plot concept on the table for the audience to follow; but gains an upper hand experience with its brilliant the use of choreograph action, music score and cast acting. It is not a perfect movie but it is a decent movie to watch.
THE RATING:
Story: 3.0
Casts: 4.0
Cinematography: 4.5
Effects: 3.5
GREEN-TEA-O-METER: 14.2/20.0
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