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Hanna (2011)

Time Out rating

Average user rating

33 reviews

Synopsis

Brit golden-boy Joe Wright moves away from the handsome prestige trappings of ‘Atonement’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to try his hand at the time-honoured high concept action thriller.

Movie review

From Time Out London

When even Kenneth Branagh is jumping on the blockbuster bandwagon, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joe Wright – director of ‘Atonement' and 'Pride and Prejudice’ – has come up with his own multiplex-friendly Euro-thriller. What is surprising, however, is what a fantastic job he’s done of it: in contrast with Branagh’s factory-stamped studio product, ‘Thor’, ‘Hanna’ is mainstream, yet bold, risky and lovably idiosyncratic.

The plot is an unpredictable rag-bag of influences: bone-crunching action sequences straight out of the ‘Bourne’ franchise jostle with cosily bourgeois family scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Mike Leigh movie. Like ‘Bourne’, the landscape is post-Cold War, the mood icily Germanic, drawn from Le Carré, Wim Wenders and ‘The Day of the Jackal’. But ‘Hanna’ doesn’t centre on a rogue CIA agent or a terrorist plot: the figure at the heart of this whirlwind is a seemingly innocuous teenage girl.

Saoirse Ronan is Hanna, whose life has been spent in wintry isolation beyond the Arctic Circle, to where her father Erik (Eric Bana) fled when his cover as a spy was blown. But now Hanna wants to see the outside world, and the only way she can do that is to allow herself to be captured by Marissa (Cate Blanchett), the intelligence operative who has been hunting them all these years. Luckily, Erik’s method of education went beyond the usual home-school textbooks: Hanna may be ignorant of life beyond the forest, but she can take out a platoon of enemy soldiers without breaking a sweat.

It’s a fairly unremarkable set-up, but Wright and screenwriters Seth Lochhead and David Farr don’t let it pin them down. Once Hanna takes to the road, the film grows wonderfully unpredictable, often very funny and even strangely affecting. This kind of fish-out-of-water schtick has been done to death, but Ronan’s wide-eyed innocent routine has real charm, and most of the supporting characters – particularly Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng as granola-grazing parents trying to teach their kids about the wider world – are brilliantly sketched.

The same can’t be said of the villains: Blanchett is impressive but a little too removed, while preening psycho Isaacs (Tom Hollander) and his gang of neo-Nazi bully-boys seem to have wandered in from a far less interesting movie. The inexplicable decision to lumber both Ronan and Bana with German accents also backfires horribly.

But what’s most remarkable and gratifying about ‘Hanna’ is how well Wright directs action: while the film as a whole may be episodic and wayward, and not always in a good way, the action scenes are uniformly sharp, inventive and gripping. Anyone who found his dramatic films a touch too by-the-book may wonder if he’s now found his true calling.

Author: Tom Huddleston

Time Out London Issue 2124 - 5-11 May 2011

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User reviews of this film

Vella said...

Posted on Oct 13 2011 15:29 OK you could drive a bus through the plot holes, but it's a riveting film with a fairy tale element, and a dynamic central performance by the brilliant Saoirse Ronan. This actress has such talent coupled with an astonishing screen presence making her the top actress of her generation.

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AUWAL IBRAHIM said...

Posted on Sep 09 2011 06:30 though, never saw it but pick more intrest in it.

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Miki said...

Posted on Aug 30 2011 01:43 I can't believe I sat down to watch a film about 12 year old assassin. It's as stupid as it sounds. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

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Thomas Noctor said...

Posted on Aug 26 2011 23:48 Plot average, movie average. Just average at best. Terrible ending. Just about watchable for the action scenes. Good Carlow actress couldn't save it though.

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Robert Thornton said...

Posted on Jun 24 2011 20:37 Awful film, "action scenes sharp, inventive and gripping" they were the same old tosh. It's so convenient when the villians don't happen to have guns as the hero doesn't get shot. Silly, silly.

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golgoth said...

Posted on Jun 16 2011 16:03 This is a highly entertaining action thriller with outstanding performances of Saoirse Ronan who plays the 16yr old Hanna and Eric Bana who portrays the German ex-agent Erik. Cate Blanchett delivers a solid performance portraying the 'evil woman'.
The pace of the movie is fast, accompanied by the thumping and pumping score of the Chemical Brothers, but also some nice and slow emotional moments are in the film.
Anyone expecting an action film without plotholes, scientific proven facts all over or even french-style arthouse cinema should look elsewhere and leave within the first 20 minutes of the film - just like some of the previous reviewers abviously did.
This movie wants to entertain and it delivers this to the point. I thoroughly enjoyed it while avoiding to question 'how or why did he/she do this?'
If you would do this in almost any action film like James Bond /Bourne / Schwarzenegger and similar you would definitely lose your fun.
"Hanna" is thrilling, fast, good action yet also solid acting and therefore 'fun'.

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AKAIK you've got the anws said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 15:03 AKAIK you've got the anwser in one!

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Scanners said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 14:32 Quite frankly the worst film I've seen in years. And I went to see the last Woody Allen. The plot has more holes than a centipede's underwear and the performances from everyone bar the girl are risible. It's like trying to watch a pantomime and play Halo at the same time when you've got a migraine. Note to Eric Bana - Deadly assassins shouldn't tell everyone where they are and then go everywhere without a gun, you're asking for trouble. Note to Joe Wright - stop trying to show off, you're going to hurt yourself. A disaster of biblical proportions. Four stars? You should be ashamed of yourself.

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Scanners said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 14:32 Quite frankly the worst film I've seen in years. And I went to see the last Woody Allen. The plot has more holes than a centipede's underwear and the performances from everyone bar the girl are risible. It's like trying to watch a pantomime and play Halo at the same time when you've got a migraine. Note to Eric Bana - Deadly assassins shouldn't tell everyone where they are and then go everywhere without a gun, you're asking for trouble. Note to Joe Wright - stop trying to show off, you're going to hurt yourself. A disaster of biblical proportions. Four stars? You should be ashamed of yourself.

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Good to see a tleant at w said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 03:25 Good to see a tleant at work. I cant match that.

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Wow! That's a really neat said...

Posted on May 31 2011 23:08 Wow! That's a really neat asnewr!

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on May 30 2011 00:15 "In the end, this film is like its heroine's strap-line,`it aims for the heart, and misses." - It is an odd and unappetising film, I think. I wonder if it lacks hear because it fudges the fate of the hippy family; they just disappear and were evidently all murdered. But it would have lost it would have been a 15 certificate presumably if it showed kids being murdered.

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ARCHGATE said...

Posted on May 29 2011 20:45 "they can't get a foothold in any emotional landscape" (£1 bargain bucket comment) Cant wait for more.

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John Cooper said...

Posted on May 29 2011 18:09 What saves this film with its rambling, formulaic plot which the screenwriters no doubt believe is an intellectual variation on the `Bourne Trilogy` . . ..
is the direction and photography which are superb. I'm afraid JohnnyP's comments about the plot, despite
the hyperbole he uses, are spot-on. Were this film to
rely on its ` genetically-enhanced Supergirl tries to find her roots` theme with its rambling narrative and its lack
of psychological depth, one might have had a really dull film. . . But the director , Joe Wright, pulls enough
cinematic tricks out of the bag to fool the likes of
Time Out's Tom Huddleston (and other arts undergraduates who want astonish the world with their insights!) into thinking this is a four-star film . . .. Admittedly there is much in the film to admire and the locations in snow-bound Northern Europe and dust-laden Morocco are wonderful. The actors do their best, but in the end despite the frenetic chases and picturesque travels, they can't get a foothold in any emotional landscape . . and there lies the problem.. In the end, this film is like its heroine's strap-line, `it aims for the heart, and misses.`

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chris jackson said...

Posted on May 23 2011 14:38 ok

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