"Hanna" a film by Joe Wright (2011)
Hanna" is a movie that may end up on our list of best films of 2011. The director Joe Wright is a film maker we're beginning to respect more and more. Other films of his you may know are "Atonement" (also with Saoirse Ronan) and the Keira Knightly version of "Pride and Prejudice."
Here he's crafted a first-rate action/adventure film about a young girl, Hanna (Ronan), who has been raised somewhere just south of the Arctic Circle by her father (Eric Bana), with no other human contact, no electricity, in almost a "survivalist" environment. We first see her tracking a reindeer/caribou(?) with a bow and arrow. She kills the majestic animal (almost a clean shot), guts it, and hauls the carcass back to their shelter on a travois. Meanwhile Dad sneaks up and attacks her, because periodic assaults are his way of honing her hand to hand defensive techniques. He also teaches her fluency in several languages, all sorts of survival skills, and fighting techniques that are obviously more than defensive. Why are they there? For what is he preparing her?
One day he retrieves a mysterious electronic radio beacon from a hiding place in the frozen tundra, and tells her she's just about ready. For what? If she flips the switch on top, he tells her, "Marissa Wiegler" will come find her, and it is Hanna's job then to assassinate her. It doesn't take long for Hanna to flip that switch since she's a youth grown restless in her limited world, although Dad seems regretful of finally sending his daughter off on the task for which he has obviously been raising her. As mysterious unmarked planes, and armed commandos descend on the snowy forest retreat, Dad takes off, saying they will reunite at a specific place in Berlin. Hanna is soon picked up by the organization so interested in finding her, not without her taking a few of the men down first.
We next see her waking up in an underground holding cell in a vast bunker under the Moroccan desert, where she is being monitored on multiple video screens by the afore-mentioned Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), looking suave and icy, with something of the attitude of "bitch-woman in charge." Hanna acts vulnerable and lost and asks for Marissa, who wisely sends in a surrogate, and that's when all hell breaks loose. Hanna employs her deadly skills, then makes a break for it, with the real Marissa and her minions in hot pursuit.
This is the set-up for a great mystery-adventure, with echoes of a Bourne-type conspiracy film. The plotting is intricate but can be easily followed, due to Wright's masterful direction.
It's a chase film, a conspiracy film, a mystery with a little sci-fi thrown in, and a bit of a road comedy too when Hanna hooks up with a eccentric and colorful British family traveling through the desert on family vacation.
Close escapes, misadventures, Hanna's budding awareness of human relationships... all follow, while we witness Hanna's rapid adaptation to the real world. Meanwhile Dad is shown moving ever closer to their German rendezvous. And through it all we begin to assemble, bit by bit, Hanna's remarkable history and the reason for all that we're seeing. You won't regret following this exciting tale to it's perfectly balanced conclusion.
We loved very minute of it. The acting all around is superb, the locals are exotic and intriguing, some of the final scenes take place, for instance, In a deserted Berlin amusement park full of menace. The pacing is fluid, and the action more than satisfying. And always there is Saoirse Ronan's blue-eyed, expressively open face, which the camera seems to love. Our only misgiving is with the electronic score by The Chemical Brothers, but who knows... you may like that too.
When it was over, a friend of ours turned to us and said, "Well that was good, but what was the point?" It took a while, but we think we have it figured out. And yes, we already want to see this one again. And we consider that to be the sign of a really good movie.
