Hanna

Director: Joe Wright

Writers: Seth Lochhead, David Farr

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett

Length: 1 hour 51 minutes

Release Date: April 8, 2011

British director Joe Wright of Academy Award nominated period pieces, Pride And Prejudice and Atonement, does a complete 180 by directing the CIA action thriller, Hanna. Academy Award Nominee Saoirse Ronan, who Wright cast in Atonement, plays the title role of Hanna Heller, a very bright 16-year-old girl, who’s lived with her ex-CIA agent father, Erik (Eric Bana) her whole life in the Arctic Circle. Here, he has been training her to become the ultimate assassin, teaching her all the world’s languages and training her in combat. When Hanna passes one of her father’s hardest tests, Erik finally decides she’s ready. When he  leaves their cabin, Hanna sets off a transmitter he gave her, alerting the CIA of her presence. The tough and corrupt Agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) sends a team to capture Hanna and they bring her back to the CIA Moroccan Safe House. We learn now that Erik betrayed the CIA and knows a secret that cannot become public. Wiegler has been assigned to kill him and has been looking for Erik for years. Wiegler sends in a body-double of herself to talk to Hanna, and within two minutes, the woman is dead. Hanna skillfully escapes the safe house, believing she has finished the real Wiegler, who she was sent to kill. From here, we are taken on a fast-paced, unique and humorous journey of Hanna traveling to Berlin, where she will reconnect with her father. Hanna is however completely unaware of the people still trying to follow her. Screenwriters David Farr and Seth Lochhead create an unbelievable story that has all the elements a good action film needs. The most admiring things about Hanna is that the script is well-rounded, with hilarious British wit in the family she meets on the way to Berlin, continuous action-filled fun that has you on the edge of your seat and a touching poignant back-story to Hanna and her father that brings the realness of the film to life. It’s quite odd that Joe Wright took on this particular film to direct, but it’s even more peculiar how he nailed the action genre with it. With his rapid camerawork and detailed special effects, we can’t escape Hanna’s ride for an instant. The cinematography of Hanna was just beautifully spectacular, from showcasing the deserts and wild streets of Morocco to a charmingly creepy park in Berlin. The whole film has a delightfully eerie feeling, most especially with the constant children’s music playing during some of most frightening and bloodiest scenes in the film. The authentic music played throughout the film was composed by British electronic band, The Chemical Brothers. Their thrilling and unique music made this movie classify as a real action movie, even though it had so much more than that. The 16-year-old Saoirse Ronan continues to grow and grow as an incredible young actress from starting with a scene-stealing performance in Wright’s Atonement and a heartbreaking explored performance in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and now with a wonderfully unexplainable performance as Hanna. I say unexplainable because I cannot understand how Ronan managed to speak beautifully in multiple languages, be able to execute perfect action sequences and also manage to portray such an intriguing girl. Without giving anything away, Hanna is not a typical kind of human, so Ronan had to either learn or interpret how to be a mechanized, impossibly intelligent teenager that does not exist in our world. Her naivety to the outside world provides much humor in the film as well as an understanding of her character. This isn’t a cheesy depiction of a mermaid who doesn’t know what a fork is, but a depiction of the actual stress it can do to an outsider, while still being funny. Although the character of Hanna is almost impossible to relate to, Ronan makes her more human than ever with her relationship with her father and her resentment toward Marissa. She makes us understand her internal emotions on another level, never done before. There is no doubt Ronan is the complete star of the film, but she is accompanied by a fantastic cast of actors. Cate Blanchett is coldhearted and disgusting as Marissa Wiegler, without being obviously evil or crazy. The audience figures out from her subtle performance what a wicked heart Marissa holds. Eric Bana is great as Hanna’s sweet and loving father that worries this plan will not turn out well. British actor Tom Hollander, who played Mr. Collins in Wright’s Pride and Prejudice, is hilariously menacing as Marissa’s friend and undercover employee, Isaacs. The source of most humor in this film though, came from the British family Hanna meets on her way to Berlin, who help her out. The young superficial girl Sophie (Jessica Barden) who Hanna befriends is just hysterical and the contrast between her and Hanna is where the laughs come from. Her parents, played by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng are also quite funny and contribute to the ordinary road trip family that seems so bizarre to Hanna. There is a dark and almost disturbing underlying tone of this film that you feel throughout the whole story. It roots from the fact that Hanna is practically a child and here she is independently murdering the bad guys and traveling on her own to fulfill her purpose. Joe Wright directs one of the most enjoyable films and certainly the best action film of 2011, so far. I cannot wait to see more performances from Ronan, especially in Wright’s beautifully unique films, such as this year’s Hanna.