HANNA. 111 mins. PG-13. Directed by Joe Wright. Written by Seth Lochhead and David Farr.
The movie starts off strong, if a tad slow. Hanna (Ronan) and her father, Erik (Bana) live an isolated life in the wilds of Finland. It's there that Erik trains Hanna to be the perfect assassin - teaching her to speak different languages and engaging her in hand-to-hand combat. Shades of the first half of Batman Begins definitely spring to mind. But 20 minutes later, Hanna flips a switch and her mission begins: kill the woman responsible for the death of her mother. I'm not joking about the switch. She literally flips a switch, which apparently serves a dual purpose: (1) setting the plot in motion; and (2) making the rest of the movie play like, as my good buddy Wally Hasselbring put it, a second-rate Danny Boyle flick.
Boyle's work is certainly a good comparison point, but I'm prone to cut Joe Wright some slack because this is his first action film. He has a great eye for detail - the movie looks beautiful and is always artfully composed - and a real knack for staging an impressive tracking shot (a fight scene involving Bana is probably the stand-out). But his directing style is not kinetic. There is no rush to any of the action scenes - it all feels too technical, too artfully directed, and, as a result, emotionally uninvesting. I imagine this is what a Sam Mendes-directed Bond film will look like.
Ronan is a great young actress and she does the part justice, but the character is a big drag. As far as underage girls laying waste to whole rooms of grown men, I'll take Kick-Ass' Hit Girl over Hanna any day. Blanchett probably fares the worst. She's the main villain, and she basically drains the movie of any intensity. Employing a hokey, fake-sounding Southern drawl, Blanchett is anything but menacing. The same goes for her henchmen. Hanna may be on the run for her life, but you're never once concerned that any of these bad guys pose a real threat. Back to Blanchett's performance though - I couldn't help but be reminded of her
campy villainess in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My heart still breaks at the mere thought of that crapfest.
Hanna prides itself on being a grown-up fairy tale, and Wright is quick to use fairy tale imagery wherever and whenever he can in a fairly obvious manner. I didn't mind that so much - especially when it results in a cool shot like Hanna entering the mouth of a tunnel shaped like a wolf. Through it all, The Chemical Brothers' score keeps the movie rolling, and amps up the excitement just when it's needed most. They may not have hit it out of the park like Daft Punk did for TRON: Legacy, but they have a promising film career ahead of them if they so choose.
To its credit, I left the theater wanting to see Hanna again, but am in no real rush to do so. Perhaps on a smaller screen with lowered expectations, Hanna may just prove to be the cool action film it so desperately wants to be.
Source: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/hammervision/2011/04/movie-review---hanna-12.html
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