Hanna movie

A spiritual sequel to Lone Wolf and Cub, Joe Wright's Hanna introduces its titular cub in her teens, and trained to the nines. Saoirse Ronan plays Hanna with a mix of fierceness and fragility and the actress is as visually compelling as her character is conceptually intriguing; the same can be said of the film as a whole. Directed with the gritty acrobatics of Atonement's Dunkirk sequence, Wright adapts to action direction impeccably, and uses scenes of combat to express different motivations—approbation, respect, protection, contrition—but all the while maintaining a spy-like cool, effectively supported by The Chemical Brother's electronic score. Box office should be good for this thriller as it has appeal for cineastes and action fans alike. With additional bells and whistles (D-Box presentation, for example) Hanna's success could come from more than just unique DNA.

In the film's opening sequence, Hanna kills a reindeer with a bow and arrow. After a hard and fast hunt she impassively offers it a factually accurate version of Last Rights, "I just missed your heart," she says, as if declaring its integrity as it dies. This is the sort of allegorical phrase at home in fairy tales, and Hanna certainly aims to be that. Hanna lives in a nameless sea of snow and prey (shot in Finland) and it's more than home, it's a boot camp and a safe-harbor from Hanna's wicked witch, Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett). Erik (a perfect Eric Bana) has been hiding her in plain sight since Weigler violently ended a government experiment to which Hanna was subject. Now, Hanna has to break free of her bud—and a less swaddling-like bud you'd be hard-pressed to find. Erik gave his civilized life to raise her, and like any gesture of independence, Hanna's reach towards autonomy resembles rejection and ingratitude. His later admission "kids gotta grow up" could break the heart of any parent. Hanna's adventures outside the confines of their Finnish post are beset with survival murders, until she meets a "normal" British family on holiday. The family's teen daughter, Sophie (Jessica Bardem), has purely superficial interests and couldn't be less like Hanna, but they bond, and juxtaposed the girls are emotional blank slates: Hanna's spent her life absorbing survival skill and Sophie's absorbed celebrity culture; their orientations to the world are similarly gruesome and tender. Still, unless the character knows her from an FBI file, everyone sees in Hanna the capacity to bring them back to something basic; she's got a goddess stature, even at the age of 16.

Much has been made of how Hanna stacks up against her ass-kicking sisters. Wright himself characterizes Hanna as an antidote to the fake fempowerment of films like Sucker Punch, however the beauty of the film and what ultimately makes it more timeless than trenchant, is the way it side-steps the entire issue of Hanna's sex. Gender dynamics stand in relief when she's pitted against the film's maternal figures: Olivia Williams plays Sophie's mother, a relic of faded feminist politics, while Blanchett's Wigler approaches Hanna with a gun and misplaced sense of maternal warmth. Hanna's motherless-ness is answered at every possible call. On the flip side, her safest times are those under the protection of fathers (Erik or Knepfler played by Martin Wuttke), suggesting the world is cruel to girls—which is what makes them such good fairy tale heroines. It's ironic, against a fairy tale house in a defunct amusement park, that this girl's fantasies couldn't be marshaled for her good.

The Chemical Brothers' score stealthily intermingles its electronic din and thud with the film's organic, percussive sounds; the result emphasizes camouflage. This is a universe ruled by clear directives and obscured origin points. As Hanna hunts her reindeer in the woods we pan and dissolve between hunter and prey, both grey and white amidst a surrounding grey and white world. This is such a deeply realized coming of age, as frightening for the parent as the child, and also strangely sweet.

Distributor: Focus Features
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander and Martin Wuttke
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Seth Lockhead and David Farr
Producer: Leslie Holleran, Marty Adelstein and Scott Nemes
Genre: Suspense
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sexual material and language.
Running time: 111 min.
Release date: April 8, 2011