Hanna

She's coming to get you...

 

Directed by Joe Wright.

Rated PG-13.

*

Hanna is the story of…Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), a 15 year old whose father Erik (Gerard Butler) has raised her alone in the woods, which isn't creepy at all. He's trained her to kill from birth for her protection, as powerful CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) is out to kill them both. Escaping from the woods when Wiegler finds them, Hanna and her father separate. Hanna must find her father and kill Wiegler before her life is cut very short.

Hanna is a fairy tale. A "princess in a tower" (Hanna) and her "kindly father" (Erik) must battle a "wicked queen/witch" (Wiegler), helped along the way by "kind-hearted and eccentric strangers" who, in defiance of reality and logic, help Hanna for no reason other than because they can. Sometimes the fairy-tale roots of the story are blatant–there's a scene where Hanna fights her

Getting ready.

way through an amusement park, owned by a man named Grimm, designed after fairy tales–but usually it's just a background to set action against.

…Which, unfortunately, doesn't quite work in my opinion. For an action story, writers can bend reality any way they want but the characters must feel real and the action must be awesome. Hanna didn't manage either. Character-wise, Hanna stumbling around the world trying to understand it is cliché; you'll recognize the "fish-out-of-water" jokes from every other fish-out-of-water movie you've ever seen. And the ease with which Hanna got things from people just by asking for them

Wiegler is displeased!

was hard to believe (though true to a fairy tale).

The action scenes were repetitious and sometimes a bit silly. There's one scene where Erik is surrounded by armed CIA agents, all of whom fight him hand-to-hand! None of them thinks to SHOOT him (until only one is left), and go at him one at a time so he can beat them up individually. How considerate.

The acting was great, though. Ronan is a rising star for a reason, and Butler and Blanchett are always exceptional. Blanchett, in particular, was pretty scary as a woman with

"I just missed your heart."

serious control issues. Her sidekick, the chipper, perverted psychopath Isaacs (Tom Hollander), made me want to crawl under my seat. Truly creepy, which made him a great movie villain.

Altogether, Hanna is well set up, well shot, and well acted. The content of the movie didn't work for me, but I went with a friend who found it "thrilling" and know plenty of others who thought the same. If you like action movies, Hanna just might be for you.