Hanna
Written by Seth Lochhead and David Farr
Directed by Joe Wright
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, and Cate Blanchett
Rated PG-13
111 minutes
Warning: this review contains some spoilers, though I’ve tried to keep them limited.
We’re definitely living in the future: a future in which a genetically engineered character doesn’t make a movie science fiction. Instead, it’s just a simple piece of background to explain certain characteristics, so I guess we can’t really consider Hanna a science fiction movie.
Instead, let’s take the movie on its own terms. What we have is a really good action/adventure movie, with a lot of blood, a lot of action, and strong females as both the lead hero and the lead villain. The movie is by turns beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted, and a kick-ass action flick. It starts in the frozen sub-arctic, with a hauntingly ethereal girl (Saoirse Ronan) stalking and killing a reindeer. As she’s butchering the deer, a man (Eric Bana) silent stalks and attacks her, and she defends herself admirably.
Then we learn the man is her father. He’s training her. Training her to be, well, in sf terms, the Terminator: an emotionless, unstoppable, all-knowing killer. This is what happens when you can’t build Terminators on an assembly line: you have to train them from birth. And Erik (Bana) is Hanna (Ronan)’s Yoda (okay, I’m mixing movie references, but deal with it—he’s training her mentally as well as physically). She’s lived her entire life in the woods, learning about the outside world only through books and Erik’s teaching. He has given her the love, companionship, and drive she’ll need to survive a much harsher, colder world than the arctic. She can track a deer, speak a dozen languages, push herself beyond human endurance, and she’s got her cover story down cold. Then Erik tells her she can leave whenever she’s ready. Simply push a button, and the outside world will know where she is. Of course, from that point, someone will be trying to kill her, and it will be her job to kill before she is killed. Well, Hanna pushes the button.
And then we learn that the contact with the outside world is the CIA. Specifically, Marissa Vieger (Cate Blanchett). Marissa was Erik’s handler nearly two decades ago, when he completely dropped out of sight. But with this signal, she knows he’s back. And she knows her world is about to change.
Erik hikes out of the woods, disappearing. Hanna waits in the cabin to be picked up, and the next thing she knows, she’s in a hidden CIA facility. She’s a young innocent, knows nothing about the outside world, but she’ll only talk to Marissa. Marissa’s a little smarter than that, and sends in a double. Hanna, assuming she’s got the right person, promptly kills “Marissa”, along with two guards, and the chase is on.
Hanna escapes the facility, finds herself in a desert, and survives. Really survives. She gets out of the desert, finds the modern world (and the alienness of it all is believably portrayed on her bewildered face—Ronan is a wonderful young actress), and tries to make her way to her planned rendezvous with her father.
Marissa, meanwhile, is sorry to have lost Hanna, but far more interested in finding Erik. She sets another contract killer on Hanna’s trail, while Marissa goes off the reservation with her own cold-blooded killings to track down Erik. Now we’ve got two chases, and in both cases, the strong female characters are going to come out on top (though in varying, interesting ways).
At this point, unfortunately, the movie devolves into a typical chase movie: lots of car chases, running, shooting, fighting, and no more time for characterization. And that’s kind of disappointing, because there are some interesting secondary characters lurking on the sides of this picture, but there’s just not enough time to learn more about them (I particularly wanted to know more about the German killer and Mr. Grimm).
This is not a feel-good movie—no happy ending (actually, almost no smiles)—but it is very satisfying. Based on the title, you know who survives. You don’t know where Hanna will go next, but it doesn’t really matter; she accomplishes her purpose in life. Anything after the closing credits will be anticlimactic.
I liked the movie. There was a little “ick” with the blood (butchering the deer, the almost-parallel death of other characters), but my biggest problem is that the film is a child of modern movie-making, with too many instances of the film-makers reminding us we’re watching a movie. I railed against J.J. Abrams’ lens flares in last year’s Star Trek; this time around, it’s shaky cameras and unending spin-shots. And that was disappointing, because the first few minutes of the movie visually beautiful (the swirling ice floes, particularly, caught my eye).
And now, a question for you: is this movie science fiction, or not? See it yourself, and then let me know your opinion.