REVIEW: HANNA

I was so on the fence about this one as the hitman genre feels so damned played out by this point, but the thought of an unbroken take is something that always piques my interest. And that it appears to be a solid film in and of itself. The word normal comes up a few times and does the film touch on the old 'normal is whatever's typical to you' or is there an embrace of what is societally acceptable at the end? Rather...will we be treated to some 'young chasing a balloon' or some other contrived stuff during the resolution or does the film keep its apparently cold style?

 

Question:

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Couldn't see this one coming out of Joe Wright, glad he hired a good team of stunt people and choreographers.

Looking forward to this.  The only other Wright film I've seen is Atonement, and that one left me cold.  This looks like it could be fun and I'm looking forward to the Chemical Brothers score.

To answer your question Doc, no. The trailer does seem to hint at that but it's not the case.

 

There really is no resolution to the film- it's pretty morbid throughout. Anyone who comes across Hanna's path ends up paying for it. If it's a fairy tale it's not one with morals, that's for sure. That's one of the things it actually has in common with Kick-Ass, actually. He's turned her into a sociopath.

Edited by Alex Riviello - 3/30/11 at 11:11am

I only just caught the trailer for this the first time the other day on HDNet's trailer show, and thought it looked great. Thanks for the (well-written) review, I'll be sure not to miss it now.

Just wanted to say solid review, Alex. This has been on my radar, and the review just increases my desire to see it.

Thanks guys. Just realized I forgot to mention that it's opening next Friday, April 8th. I attended the very first critic screening over a month ago so this is a rare occasion when the embargo worked in our favor and allowed us to get it up early.

Edited by Alex Riviello - 4/1/11 at 12:35am

 

Really? I thought her killings would all be in self defense or for the ultimate goal of her freedom. I mean that would be different than Hit girl where she actively sought out trouble for revenge.
 

 

Well it's not like she's going around killing people for the hell of it, but when she has to (a target, or someone standing in her way) she doesn't think anything of it. They're not people- all that exists in her world is her and her father.

Right but you wouldn't call a soldier a sociopath. As I understand the movie they want to kill her so she kills them first. Feels more like self preservation. I mean I think any of us would kill if we are forced to in order to save our lives or the lives of others. Bourne wasn't exactly into offing people either.  For a moment I actually thought she was pushed so far by her father that she was offing bystanders that were in her way(cops,ect who were innocent) which actually would have been pretty interesting.  Either way im in.

 

Yeah, I've been very interested in this movie since I first saw it mentioned on this site some months ago.  I've been very impressed by Bana's work, and your review only solidifies my desire to see it.  (It sounds very Bourne-like, and I'm a huge fan of those.)  Thanks for posting the release date.  I was curious as to when it was, as I haven't seen it advertised and this review seemed to come out of the blue. 

 

Is this getting a full, wide release?

Why wouldn't you call a soldier a sociopath? Sure, anyone could kill if their survival is at stake, but a sociopath does it without feeling anything. She does kill innocents in her way- employees at the company, etc. Plus, mass murderers and sociopaths are two different things.

 

Yes sir! Focus is putting it out.

 

I was kind of afraid this would be a case of cool trailer mediocre movie. Nice to see it wasn't so.

I think this may be my favorite movie of the year so far. A great fairy tale. I'd like to thank the casting director for putting Ronan and Blanchett in the same film because I think Ronan can be the next Blanchett: beautiful, not traditionally so, pale as hell, talented and capable of many, many things. That single take took my breath away because of the integration of the action towards the end. What a wonderfully crafted film. The script definitely needed a little more polish, perhaps some better closing with the underused family, but I love it all the same.

Funny thing (well, not FUNNY, per se, but-) was that Joe Wright told us that there was a scene excised in which

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No ambiguity for me...

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 Great movie.

Really, really good film.  That's two weeks in a row I came in with somewhat restrained expectations and left pleasantly surprised and satisfied.  Just really fine filmmaking all around (although if I'm picking nits, I do wish some of the fighting wasn't so obscured by editing tricks).

 

Holy shit. What a ride. This is one of the best action films America has produced in years. Not to sound maudlin, but this had heart, humor, ass-kicking, terrific performances, bold and exciting direction, thematic resonance, and just about anything I could hope for. I'll have to ruminate on it some more, but for right now I am still buzzing. So fun.

 

With two Aussies and an Irish girl at the center? Paul MacCartney wouldn't touch this film with a twelve foot barge pole.

 

I enjoyed Hanna too. Stylistically, it was aces. I really dug all the performances as well. The only downside to the film was that it was so predictable every step of the way.

Did you notice that Hanna had pierced ears? Kinda takes away her spartan cred, a little...

 

Yeah, I guess I should have said "released" instead of "produced". I had thought this was an American production with European talent, but I probably just got mixed up.
 

 

Great movie! Loved the stylistic touches and steady pacing. The lack of closure for the family leads me to suspect there were many gruesome ends to them that test audiences must have hated. I'm sure if we get one, the directors cut will be very dark.

I knew what you meant Wookie, I was just playing.

 

Good performances, some creative chase/fight sequences and a good soundtrack. It also has a sense of humor.

I liked Hanna's interactions with the annoying british girl and her family.

 

"Well you're easy to convince. Ho."

-"Who??"

 

"How did your mother die?"

-"Three bullets."

 

How did Hanna pull off that arrow trick at the end? Did she some kind of elastic tubing while I wasn't paying attention?

She picked up some elastic rope while she was running. I kept waiting for her to pick up some wood and make a bow out of it but that "slingshot" sufficed, in accomodating an ending predetermined since she plucked out the arrow from Grimm.

Still Sasquatch Ronan was pretty damn wonderful in this. It's weird how she'd appear ten years old in one scene and thirty in the next. A damn good movie.

I liked it quite a bit... Quite unique, and the fairytale stuff was neatly integrated. But that 'arrow' at the end is definitely the biggest "HUH?" of the film, I think. 

 

I would have liked to have seen a resolution to the family, but having seen the film, I seriously doubt that there was a scene cut where she kills them. If you have seen the film you know that is the absolute last thing she would do, it would be completely against her character. She becomes very attached to them and does her best to try to protect them. (not that she can do much)

 

Ronan & Bana were great. Very odd Blanchett in this film :) but she was very good too.

I thought the scene in question showed that Blanchett and her goons killed the family after the interrogations?  That would be completely in her character.  

They did kill them. They were killing everyone in their way, and anyone who could connect them to Hanna.

This was the best movie of the year so far. Great acting. Great action. The ending felt too rushed, but I can live with it. I loved the music, as it seemed to give the move almost nightmare-ish qualities at times.

I've heard Joe Wright say that this is precisely what happened.
 

 

This was a very cool film that was a lot of fun.  Loved how funny it could be and how exciting the action sequences were.  

 

One thing I found odd was that I sometimes had a hard time getting a sense of where I was in the movie.  It never really feels like it, but Hanna is quite the globe-trotting movie based on the variety of locations listed in the end credits.  It sometimes felt like characters were teleporting from place to place.  It wasn't a problem.  It went along just fine with the fairy tale logic the film often played with.  

 

Hahahah, I also went "Eh?!" at Hanna's makeshift slingshot.  "That carnival rope has amazing tensile strength!"  Cate Blanchett also gets up really quickly from getting hit by it.  In a movie that has a 16 year old girl kicking Eric Bana's ass... IT WENT TOO FAR!

 

I'm conflicted about the ending.  I love how abrupt and circular it is, but I invested in the characters enough to want to see more conventional closure.  

 

Also... Ronan has tiny ears.  Hehehe.  Just something I noticed as she was enjoying the RV ride.

 

Love the image of Tom Hollander hoofing it in his jogging suit.

 

Funny how Jessica Barden basically plays the same character she played in Tamara Drewe.  Horny teenage girl.  She's great at it.

What a weird, cool movie. I want to be Eric Bana when I grow up.

 

For some reason it felt sort of like a companion piece to A.I. to me, even though it's totally different. I guess it's the whole kid-in-a-hostile-fairy-tale-world thing.

 

What do we make of the ending? For myself, I thought the film had put Hanna through the fairy tale journey to show that she had grown up (Bana even says it, and I think we're supposed to be taking that at face value), and is pretty much able to just go out into the world. The film saves the revelation of Hanna's "nature" for that weak sauce twist, but I think the point of the movie is that Hanna outgrows the militaristic (sociopathic?) nature that had been bred into her and figures out what a regular emotional life is throughout the course of the film. In the end, Blanchett's death is the death of that old life.

I got the opposite feeling from the end. Wigler's psychotic assholery finaly turned Hanna into what she was bred to be. After thinking she had completed her mission she tried running away from every fight. She tried not killing anyone. But in the end after Wigler rejected her final plea, she turned around, hunted her down and killed a human in the exact same way she did the deer in the beginning of the movie.

 

And the thing Hanna did with the rope isn't anything weird or exotic. Javelin throwing light infantry had been using "slingshots" of that type since forever. Hers was just scaled down since it was used with an arrow instead of a javelin. It just multiplies the momentum your arm gives to the projectile.

Yeah, I agree with Stelios.  I thought quite a bit about what the appearance of the deer in the tunnel could mean, and I think it helps Hanna decide that her prey hasn't changed.  When she's going to finish off Cate, she's just killing an animal.

 

While I was watching the movie, I remembered the debate here, sparked by Alex' comment that Hanna was a sociopath.  I wasn't seeing it at all.  Her body count stays pretty low the majority of the movie.  She kills the soldiers at the beginning who rushed her house (though that seemed almost more like a reflex than anything, as she then proceeds to give herself up.)  She kills the Cate lookalike (Sorry.  I don't remember the character's name.) and the guards to make her escape.  And later she kills the German thug with the knife.  She does kill cooly and easily, so I guess there's something to the claim that she's a sociopath.  But I think the definition fits a whole lot better by the end of the film, judging by how things go down.  If there was a Hanna 2, my guess is she'd be leaving quite a body count behind her from this point forward.

 

It's kind of an odd choice, and maybe not one would make easily, to train a girl who was bred specifically to be a warrior to follow that path.  It seems almost unfair.

 

I found the kiss scene intriguing.  It made sense to me that Hanna would be uncomfortable with a display of affection from a male figure.  Female interaction in any form would hold much more mystery. 

 

And I love how dirty and gross the world became as soon as the veneer of wonder was past.  (Or as soon as she came into 'civilization.'  Whichever way you want to look at it.)

Good points. I guess I should try to clarify my reading of the film a bit, but I think that it coexists with your reading rather than directly contradicting it.

 

I had read an interview with Wright before going in where he talked about making an action movie that wasn't from the typical right wing perspective, so that may have made me look for some things which made me have a somewhat different take. I do think that there are some lines here and there that point to one of the film's themes, namely a critique on modern society and class. I'm thinking mainly of Mr. Grimm talking about passports and computers and how we use them so that "we don't have to look each other in the face", and how this seems strange to Hanna, since she has basically spent most of her life in a sort of state of nature.

 

I think Hanna may be representative of the 21st century person, expected (or bred, literally in her case) to specialize in certain tasks to keep the machine moving, but the basic human yearnings that make doing this difficult cannot be stamped out. Hanna's growing up is her putting an end to the machine that wants to use her for its own purpose so that she can be free (Finally, or free once again? I'm unsure whether her life in the beginning of the film is supposed to evoke freedom or happiness. Depending on how you read the opening, that could affect how you read the dear in the tunnel. It could evoke the final awakening of killer instinct or the freedom of nature. Maybe both.) After the elimination of the final piece, the rebellion (the growing up) is complete, and I don't know that it's really necessary to show what happens next. Either way, the film is about growing up, not being grown up. All a coda would have done, I think, is clutter what it's trying to say.

 

Essentially, I have a Rousseauian/Marxist reading of the movie at present, and I like that the film invites that. But I think that our different reading might actually serve as complements rather than contradictions. If my reading holds up, and it is about attaining freedom, then there is still something frightening and tragic about that when viewed fully in the face.

The movie scored a C+ Cinemascore. Anyone want to speculate if this scene was the reason? I don't think there have been any mainstream or semi-mainstream actioners with a scene like that moment in the tent with Hanna and her new friend.

 

I bet Edvard Grieg sure wishes he were alive right now.

I loved this movie. A few sequences in the beginning came off as a bit over-directed but once the film gets her out into the world, I was completely on its wavelength.

 

Normally, I'm not a fan of when movies rely too much on fairy tale hooks. Just seems trite to me, as if I should be feeling something is precious or innocent when it's all way too obvious to be interesting. But here it works really well because it's a matter-of-fact dilapidated park where nature has grown wild. Also, the 2nd act doesn't really play into that at all, so when it eventually creeps in it's a nice unexpected tonal shift. Not to mention the fact that Wright's almost Danny Boyle-esque editing style, along with the Chemical Bros score, really keeps this thing moving at a clip and prevents it from going too far astray.

 

And yeah, when Cate Blanchett says to Olivia Williams that she hates days like this (or something to that effect),

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Hahahahaah... Reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where the Repo Man sighs...

 

"Repossessing stuff is the hardest part of my job..."

Has anyone figured out a way to spin the inconsistency of Hanna being literally afraid of even the most basic technology one moment (in the hotel room scene), to browsing the web for information on d.n.a. the next?

I don't think she was afraid of it, more than all at once the channel suddenly changing to war correspondence, the volume going up, her accidentally turning on the fan, and the kettle making noise and burning her overwhelmed her and freaked her out.

I now really want to visit that rundown amusement park in the middle of the forest.  Love the shot of Blanchett slowly walking out of the alligator head.

Was it an alligator head? I remembered it being a (big bad) wolf head.

 

 

I read it as her mind becoming overwhelmed by all the new stimuli. Like, she has that whole "no fear" thing going on, but she's still a human being with emotions and limitations. At that moment, after using all her wits to flee for her life and then finally finding relative safety, her ability to momentarily process all this new stuff all at once broke down. She's familiar with television, computers, and the internet as concepts but to practically figure out all that stuff after being mentally exhausted really made sense and humanized her. At the risk of overselling it, I don't consider that spin. More like logical character development.

I thought one of the best things about it was the teenage daughter of the family Hanna befriends...and then ends by coming into contact with them. Don't know the actress' name, but she gave a great performance in Tamara Drewe that was barely out last year.

 

Anyway, I liked the movie. I love how absolutely twisted and just plain odd the movie feels.  

That's a tad spinny, but bag it up and ring me up, cause I'll buy it all the same. If I could forgive the pierced earlobes, I could look past this too.

I don't think it's spinny at all, that was my natural reaction when watching it.

 

This felt very much like an Alias movie to me - crazy CIA daddy/daughter relationship, exotic locales, constant hand-to-hand fighting despite everyone having access to weapons, aggressively stupid science fiction elements shoehorned in, fairly derivative narrative twists, etc.  There's a great movie in here, but the genetic manipulation / supersoldier angle needs to be completely removed.  This is a small, personal story and I think Bana training his daughter to survive only to end up turning her into the ultimate cold blooded killer is profound enough without the superfluous psuedo-science thrown in.  Plus it would also eliminate the need for that idiotic Google search scene.  

 

I also thought Hanna's training was problematic.  Being a CIA operative, I'm assuming, is less about physical combat and more about infiltration, blending in, reading people.  Erik should understand this, and I get that he wanted Hanna to have the necessary skills to survive, but it seems odd to me that he would leave her completely unprepared for real world interaction considering his background as an operative.

 

I did really enjoy the movie.  Wright has real action chops and all the big action moments were great.  I loved Hanna's escape from the government facility - the crazy lighting and bizarre architecture made everything feel otherworldly.  The bus station fight with Bana was aces.  Score was fantastic as well; Daft Punk should be taking notes.   

SPOILERS:

 

I pretty much loved the film.  I thought it was beautiful and sad.  Thrilling.  Stunning to behold at times.  Left me with mixed emotions.  I think there was enough shown to the audience for us to put 2 and 2 together-- the family Hanna befriends meets a tragic end and we know that based on what happens to everyone else that gets mixed up with poor Hanna.  As for her being a sociopath, of course there is some merit to that interpretation, and I think that's part of the sadness of the tale-- she doesn't realize the true depth of trouble she causes for people she comes into contact with.  She's getting innocent people killed and she is sort of innocent of that herself.  It's hard to blame her for it but it's also kind of chilling to think that when she kills Marissa she is killing someone who deserves to be killed without fully understanding why she's so deserving of death.  She's basically unwittingly avenging the vacationing family and everyone else Marissa and her thugs killed, and that kind of cold, animalistic killing is a bit disturbing even if the victims deserve it more than the killer knows.

Somebody help me here.

 

So Bana's character attempted to take Hanna and her mother into hiding, away from the agency, in essence to start a new life where the child won't be exploited.  So for the next 15 years he trains the child to be a lethal killing machine...basically fulfilling the destiny he was trying to avoid? 

 

If it was Bana's intention to get away, to start a new life, couldn't they have done just that?  Hanna and her father both speak several languages, hell, nobody even knows what Hanna looks like.  Couldn't they have blended in?  I thought the movie made it pretty clear that they were not being actively searched for by the government.  Instead he is training Hanna for the sole purpose of killing Wigler to get his revenge (I guess?).  If that is the case, doesn't this make Bana's character the worst guy ever?

Edited by bob loblaw - 4/13/11 at 11:50am

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I think this is a really interesting (and extremely grim) take and perfectly illustrates why they didn't need to bother with all the DNA bullshit.  This kind of weighty emotional stuff resonates just fine without it.  In any event, I got the feeling that the extremely paranoid Erik assumed the government still considered him a high priority and assumed that Hanna could not have a normal life with Wigler still in the picture, even if that wasn't actually the case.  I'm sure revenge factored in as well (that look of satisfaction when he gets the postcard from Hanna).  The movie was not shy about showing us that, despite his genuine affection, hes a pretty terrible dad.