Director: Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice)
Top stars: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett
Running time: 111 minutes
The film ends and I sit back in my seat - still, silent and stunned.
That’s what Hanna will do to you. It suctions you into the fast unraveling world of sixteen year old Hanna and takes you on a jaunt. The cinematography is, plainly put, brilliant (so brilliant that I actually found out who the cinematographer was). Scenes like the conversation between the two girls, the electricity havoc in the little room and the escape from the safe house are gorgeously shot and please may we have a standing ovation for Alwin H. Kuchler (the cinematographer, duh!).
The highly manipulative background score pushes the viewer into definite oscillations of emotions and proves to be quite quirky at times. Half way through the movie, just when you’re starting to think about how tight the editing is, it slackens in the second half. But none of these things matter in those 111 minutes because Saoirse Ronan redefines the term ‘show stealer’. She hops from being an inherent killing machine and a wide- eyed, inquisitive teen with uncanny ease. Competing with her is the icy Cate Blanchett. Blanchett is as terrifying as her role requires her to be but shines in those little moments of fear, surprise and falsity. Unfortunately, apart from the two ladies, nobody else makes an impression in the acting department. Eric Bana just barely flickers, then dies (pun intended).
Hanna (Ronan) is raised by her 'father’, Eric Heller (Bana) in the wilderness of Finland and is pumped with extensive knowledge, a large number of languages and combat skills in preparation to take on whatever is waiting in the world for her. Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett) is the CIA agent previously in-charge of killing Eric and Hanna, as they are both strays of an experiment cover-up. This compounds into a wild chase and it would be injustice to the film for me to reveal more.
Every character, no matter how small, has beautiful depth which is very subtly revealed. But the apparent effulgence of the film dims after you have watched it. The plot begins to seem confusing and certain scenes, far-fetched. How did Hanna, who was so startled by ceiling fans and a telephone, so easily use the computer? What happens to the travelling family? And how on earth did Hanna get ear piercings living in a forest?
But sometimes an explosive first impression is enough to carry a film through. And if those occasional moments of intimate humanity and cinematic genius don’t leave you still, silent and stunned, little else will.
More info on Hanna: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia
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