Hanna

Synopsis: 16-year-old Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her father, Erik (Eric Bana), in a cabin in the wilds of Finland. He is an ex-CIA operative who has raised his daughter to be strong and fearless. She is trained in hunting and self-defence, but knows little of the “real” world. She is told that when the time is right she will venture into the world to face a woman called Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), also a CIA operative, but one with dark secrets tying her to Erik and Hanna. When that time comes Hanna must face extraordinary dangers as she is pursued and finally forced to confront the true meaning of her life.

Hanna is a high-voltage affair blending elements of fairy tale with those of spy thriller and super-fast action film. It opens spectacularly, with total silence, in the snow-bound sub-Arctic wilds as Hanna hunts and fells an elk, then eviscerates it with her bare hands. She then engages in fierce hand-to-hand combat with a man who we discover is her father doing his duty in preparing her for what is to come. Her only other schooling is being read to from Grimm’s fairy tales and various children's books, so while this teenager is a fighting force to be reckoned with she is in many ways also a wide-eyed innocent.

Since Joe Wright directed Ronan in Atonement (2007) this young actress has come a long way to give an emotionally complex performance as Hanna, who blends characteristics of naivete and knowingness, of gentleness and harsh killer instinct. And she looks just extraordinary with an almost ethereal beauty. Bana sporting a credible German accent blends protective, fatherly instincts beautifully, with his trained killer skills. Blanchett, although less effective with her American accent, as always, struts her stuff as the cool and cunning Wiegler who will stop at nothing to achieve her goals. Several smaller roles impress, as Hanna teams up with a touring British family of neo-hippies in a Kombi van. Olivia Williams is quirkily strong as the mother while Jessica Barden as Sophie, the only friend Hanna has ever had, is an effective screen presence. Tom Hollander as a particularly ruthless, creepy and slightly effeminate killer is also fun to watch. 

Underpinning the fine trio of leading actors, is Wright’s energetic film-making style, which almost gives the impression of a music video clip running full tilt with the Chemical Brothers’ score driving it onwards. In one particularly gripping sequence Hanna escapes from a CIA bunker deep beneath the Moroccan desert. As she makes her way through various levels of a building, the rhythmically cut twists and turns of the camera make for a thrilling and breath-taking visual experience. Many scenes will re-iterate this ratcheted tension, with some chases coming across as fresh, thanks to the terrific editing and cinematography. Fairy tale elements are used repeatedly, which possibly some will think heavy-handed symbolism but which nevertheless makes for great visuals.

Thematically, there are a couple of problems. There is a barely hinted-at sci-fi element which is insufficiently expanded on and doesn’t work powerfully enough to validate Weigler and Erik's deadly enmity. There are  things Hanna does in the big, bad world that I find implausible, given her cosseted first 16 years. And whilst the fight scenes are superbly choreographed, when Erik trounces several presumably men in the Berlin underground I found myself thinking “surely not”, with a similar reaction as he tries to outrun a car in hot pursuit (as for how Hanna manages to catch onto the underside of a fast moving vehicle when she makes her bunker escape, well clearly Wright expects us to suspend all judgements).

These gripes aside, Hanna is a highly enjoyable film that will raise your adrenalin and get you believing that there is still something new in the fast and furious school of action film-making.

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