Hanna (2011) [Blu-ray]
Action | Crime | Mystery | Thriller

An action-packed suspense-thriller starring Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Lovely Bones), Hanna is "an exuberant chase thriller that pulses with energy!" (Justin Chang, Variety) Raised by her father (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one. Sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe, eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence, in a movie critics are calling "exhilarating, audacious and boldly original!" (Karen Durbin, Elle)

User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** MFFJM2 from Washington, DC, 18 April 2011 • This film was derivative of many other films including (Soldier, Resident Evil), with little new in the way of plot. The immoral CIA creates a program in which they are attempting to genetically create the perfect soldier by fooling with the DNA of embryos. When the experiment proves successful (huh..? Why shut down a successful program..?) it is decided for unknown reasons to end the project and terminate all those involved. Eric Bana, the CIA field agent who recruited the women for the experiment has a change of heart and tries to save one woman and her child. For no particular reason, except to give Hanna a reason to want revenge later on, the mother is killed by Kate Blanchett, and Eric Bana escapes with the infant. Bana raises Hanna as his own in an "arctic" cabin without electricity or modern conveniences, in order to prepare her for the day that she has to face the CIA and their henchmen. The day finally arrives when Hanna decides that she is ready. Bana digs up a transponder he had buried and places it in front of Hanna quipping that once the switch is flipped it can't be undone. Since there is no electricity in the cabin, and in fact Hanna has never seen an electric light, the method by which Bana got a battery to operate after over 14 years is never explained. Bana leaves Hanna alone to be captured by the dastardly CIA operatives. He did this apparently in order for Hanna to kill Kate Blanchett. Why he doesn't take Hanna with him, instead of leaving her to be taken by the CIA is left unexplained. Hanna is brought to an underground holding cell, the size of the Superbowl, in Morocco.

Strangely, Morocco looks a lot like the desert southwest of the US. Naturally, Hanna is more than a handful for the loutish CIA operatives and manages to escape through the ubiquitous air-conditioning vents which just happen to be her size. She makes her way to the surface, and just as she is looking out of a vast desert vista in broad daylight, Hummvees start driving directly over her head, apparently oblivious to the fact that there is an open submarine door in their path. As the last Hummvee passes the hole is shown as empty clearly showing that Hanna has managed to take hold of the undercarriage of the last vehicle as it passed at 50 mph, where she hangs on similar to Robert De Niro as Max Cady in the 1991 film "Cape Fear". Too bad nobody told the director about this same treatment by the "Simpsons" with Sideshow Bob. I'm sure I'm not the only one surprised by the location of Morocco for this CIA detention cell, instead of somewhere in the US. It becomes obvious later on when Hanna has the opportunity to show off her dexterity with languages, which wouldn't have come up in the US quite so easily. Also, since it was decided by the Director to have the final fight scene in an amusement park in Germany, the CIA detention center had to be someplace from which Hanna could conceivably get to Germany, without a passport or any ID.

At one point in the film Eric Bana picks up a post card at a post office, apparently where they've been holding his mail for the past 14 years, and there's a postcard from Hanna telling him in code she has killed Kate Blanchett, which is unfortunately incorrect. How she bought the stamp, mailed the postcard, or knew which post office Bana would be near is unexplained. The fact that all of this action takes place in a matter of a few days, makes the idea that a post card can get from Morocco or Spain to Germany in that amount of time laughable to anyone who has lived overseas.

There are several editing or continuity errors, like when Hanna kills the reindeer with a bow and arrow, but then guts a reindeer of approximately half the size, and then brings the originally sized reindeer home on a sleigh, apparently having made the sleigh from the raw materials by hand.

The choice of where and when to use blood spatter effects is also interesting. Hanna gets her face splashed when shooting people, and the picture in front of grandma gets covered when Kate Blanchett kills her (again for no reason), but the reindeer is remarkably without blood, even though Hanna is in the process of gutting it.

If you can willingly suspend your disbelief for this film, then you really have no disbelief to suspend.

The story is derivative, the characters are two dimensional and without motivation, the lines are full of clichés, and the violence is unrealistic. Eric Bana is supposed to be the Zen like trainer of Hanna, but he can't seem to handle a Aryan Brotherhood with a knife. I suppose 12 year old girls will like the scene where Hanna flips a Spanish boy who tries to kiss her, but her reactions were closer to that of someone suffering from anti-social personality disorder than of a normal teenager.

The fact that Hanna kills people for little or no reason would seem to suggest that she is in fact meant to be characterized as a serial killer, except that she announces to Eric Bana that she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore, when all she really needs to do is to stop hurting people.

I found it disconcerting that Eric Bana had spent 14 or so years training Hanna to kill everything that moves, when the CIA was unaware of his or her actual existence. He could just as easily have changed his name and raised Hanna on a ranch in Idaho or a tenement in the South Bronx, but then there wouldn't have been as much of a story, as such.

Summary: Wow, was this a waste of money.

[CSW] -3- At its heart Hanna is a dark fairytale that has a lot to say about violence in society and human nature. Those expecting fast paced action will be disappointed, as Hanna is more akin to A Clockwork Orange then a Borne film. In my opinion they didn't pull off the dark fairytale as well as I expected. I'm not quite sure why but I really didn't see the transformation from assassin only to a coming-of-age teen. I do think it must have been the script because the acting was very good by all the major players. My suspension-of-disbelief did snap a few times usually having to do with members of the British family Maybe part of my lower rating is in part because I was expecting an action movie instead of suspenseful drama film and because of that I think I dropped it from a -4- rating, after all the first half looked to be a great action film. I think if you know in advance that this is a dramatic suspense/mystery film instead of an action flick you will find it far more enjoyable. It is worth seeing primarily because Hanna is unlike anything that has come out of the mainstream in quite some time and for that reason alone should not be missed.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box 9.8/10.

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