Hanna (2011)

Davey likey. What makes Hanna such a brilliant and odd little slice of cinema is that it is not an action film. Here, we have a film directed by Joe Wright, who directed such dramas as Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and…um…The Soloist. And this film is no different. Hanna is not an action film. It is a drama, a character piece. It just so happens that the character we’re focusing on is a sixteen-year-old girl who can murder you in the course of ten seconds with nothing but her hands and her wit. Seriously, there is a scene in this movie where she starts crying. The CIA agent, believing her to be having a girl moment, starts to hold her and give a reassuring word. Hanna then promptly goes to break the agent’s neck, and takes down a very large number of guards in a very short amount of time. And that, in short, is the entire film. We have this sweet scene of drama, this true light of brilliance, and then we see some awesome action. And that is what makes this movie work. It blends wonderful drama with epic action. The plotline of the film concerns a child named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), who is raised for sixteen years in the wilderness by her father Erik (coincidentally Eric Bana). Hanna is being trained to hunt ruthlessly, deadly, like that of a professional assassin. She is told that as soon as she believes she is ready, she can flip a switch that allows her to go into the world freely. The only catch is that a ruthless CIA agent Marissa (Cate Blanchett) is going to be tracking her and doing whatever she can to stop this child. Why, you may ask in such a clichéd manner? Because, without trying to spoil too much, Hanna is part of an experiment gone awry that involved Erik many years ago. So, Erik escapes, and soon, Hanna does as well. And it becomes a chase film. Marissa is chasing Hanna, Hanna is trying to reconcile and find Erik, and we have a chase film involving three brilliant assassins. And now we have where the drama aspects of the film come in. The other half of the film is a coming-of-age film with a central character who has never had contact with the outside world. She meets a family on her way to reunite with her father, and has a special bond with the daughter of the family, which is kind of tragic. This girl is Hanna’s only friend. And that is kind of sad. That element is where a lot of the drama in the film comes in, and it works. The movie works on nearly every single level. It is a brilliant tragic coming-of-age drama, it is also a brilliant spy thriller. There is a scene in this movie, one single shot, where Eric Bana takes down about seven assassins in a subway. The shot is about thirty seconds long, and it is amazing. It is probably the single greatest single-shot piece in a film since the airplane crash in 2009’s Knowing. But here, it’s in a good film. A very good film. A great film. Let’s cut to the chase, just watch this movie already, kay?
9/10