Hanna (2011)
Directed by Joe Wright
Raised by her father, an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing has been geared to making her the perfect assassin. Sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys across Europe, eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence.
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What critics say influenced Hanna
Constantly under pursuit—the many chase scenes recall Run Lola Run—Ronan finds refuge with a British family (led by Olivia Williams) traveling through Morocco.
Once there was a German thriller called " Run Lola Run " in which its heroine does much running.
Saoirse Ronan ("The Lovely Bones" and "Atonement") plays a teenager who isn't the kind of girl you want to upset in this action-packed thriller that's sort of a juvenile version of "Run Lola Run."
"Hanna" doesn't deliver a typical Hollywood action film but rather something more akin to a European thriller like "Diva" or "Run Lola Run," films that are more expressionistic and stylized.
Luc Besson's "The Professional" comes to mind, as do the propulsive synth-syncopations of "Run Lola Run" and the dark allegorical menace of Grimms fairy tales.
She also runs a lot, an activity that has prompted comparisons to director Tom Tykwer’s 1998 Run Lola Run.
The concept of a lead character who was raised in nature and isolated from the rest of humanity aligns Hanna with classic films like François Truffaut’s The Wild Child or Werner Herzog’s The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, but Wright and his screenwriters, Seth Lochhead and David Farr, don’t study their heroine’s cultural miscues all that closely.
The concept of a lead character who was raised in nature and isolated from the rest of humanity aligns Hanna with classic films like François Truffaut’s The Wild Child or Werner Herzog’s The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, but Wright and his screenwriters, Seth Lochhead and David Farr, don’t study their heroine’s cultural miscues all that closely.
The movie takes elements of "La Femme Nikita" and Natalie Portman in "The Professional," along with portions of the comic-book gals who've wielded weapons at the multiplex (take your pick, there have been several in the past year) and plunks it all down in a not-very-brave new world.
It's not meant to be real, only a relatively asexual variation on the glossy slaughter games of "La Femme Nikita."
A Stranger in a Strange Land meets La Femme Nikita.
In addition to “The Fifth Element,” the film also borrows from “Run Lola Run” (staircase scene), “La Femme Nikita” (escape from headquarters scene), etc.
Think La Femme Nikita facing down Bullwinkle Moose's Natasha Fatale, incorporating breakneck running á la Run Lola Run (but without that film's clever conceit of random events leading to alternate realities).
Ronan is one of the greatest actors of her young generation and she is captivating here not only as a pint-sized assassin (evoking both La Femme Nikita and Natalie Portman in The Professional), but also in her extraordinary childlike wonder at the world blossoming around her. Isolated for her entire life, things as basic as music, electricity, airplanes, television and even best friends and handsome boys are utterly foreign concepts and more often than not present themselves as an avalanche of sensory overload.
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Unlike Hit Girl, the underage heroine of the egregious " Kick-Ass " with whom Hanna will inevitably be compared, Ronan's 16-year-old is no foul-mouthed brat.
Superfically, and "superficially" is a really great adverb to keep in your pocket when you're talking about Hanna, the film looks like it could be the latest in the disquieting subgenre of teen girls killing people in sometimes very brutal ways, typified by the indifferently nihilistic Kick-Ass .
Of course the movie reÂminded me of " Kick-Ass " (2010), the action fantasy about a deadly young girl.
As with the recent "Kick-Ass," the kick we're supposed to be getting in "Hanna" comes from an innocent but deadly under-ager opening up can after can of whup-ass.
Indeed, the script’s militant daddy-daughter relationship is sure to generate comparisons to the similar dynamic in last year’s “Kick-Ass,” and online chatter has already hailed Hanna as a slightly older incarnation of Hit-Girl.
Her Hanna isn’t quite as entertaining as “Kick-Ass” dynamo, Hit-Girl, but Ronan makes the underlying emotions far more real and impactful.
At times, thanks to the harsh landscape and baroque production design, this concoction feels like “The Virgin Spring” meets “Lady from Shanghai.”
(It's like a passage out of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout.)
The only constant is Ronan (who also starred in Wright's Atonement), who pours a dreamy concentration into her portrayal of Hanna.
As Hanna gradually reveals her almost superhuman abilities to her astonished hunters, the screenwriters and director Joe Wright ("Atonement") unveil elements of the characters' histories and motives.
The titular 16-year-old (Saoirse Ronan, whose performance in Wright's "Atonement" landed her an Oscar nomination at 13) has grown up in the icy wilderness of northern Finland, raised by her father Erik (Eric Bana) under mysterious circumstances.
Joe Wright probably isn’t the first director you’d think of when assigning an action thriller, what with his forays into highly-acclaimed period fare – Pride and Prejudice and Atonement – and his less-popular though still admirable dramatic work in The Soloist.
As ably portrayed by Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan, Hanna likewise is out to avenge a dead mother, but Wright and his three writers treat her cat-and-mouse game against the person responsible — a hissable CIA operative played by Cate Blanchett — with a hardcore efficiency that eschews any sops toward gorehounds.
Looking at his previous films -- including Pride & Prejudice and Atonement -- it's hard to believe that director Joe Wright helmed the frenetic revenge film that is HANNA.
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Just as Christopher Nolan's Memento made you experience its character's short-term memory loss by telling its story in reverse, Hanna's style echoes the girl's emergence into society which, coming as she does from total isolation, feels overwhelmingly heightened.
Blanchett’s aforementioned performance is absurd as she flip-flops accents more than Julia Roberts did in “Mary Reilly.”