“Hanna” is an artfully-directed, compulsively-watchable action “chick flick” that pits Irish sensation Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement”; “The Lovely Bones”) against the Oscar-winning Australian Cate Blanchett (“Notes on a Scandal”; “Elizabeth”) in a “battle royale” between two international assassins.
The movie pretty-much assumes the viewer has seen every chase film ever made (most notably, “Run Lola Run”) and so dispenses with any traditional semblance of plot & character in favour of thrilling choreography, fast-paced editing and some of the most gorgeous cinematography I’ve ever seen.
It’s not quite science fiction or fantasy though the storyline is so improbable it hardly merits following: a sixteen-year-old girl is raised by her father—played by Eric Bana, somewhere in the wilds of Scandinavia—to be the perfect international assassin capable of avenging the death of her mother at the hands of a villainous CIA agent.
In “Hanna,” there’s such an intense, almost abstract focus on movement, energy, colour & music—for their own sake—that makes the typical logic of following a story—or immersing oneself in the characters (they’re far too superhuman)—kind of a distraction. What “Hanna,” like so many contemporary action films, is really about is itself—the beauty of its own form and style.
And if that makes the film sound superficial, well, so be it.
It’s not the film I would have expected from director Joe Wright, who is best known for the decorous, Masterpiece Theatre-style period-pieces “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice.” What seemed cold and stilted to me in those films feels gloriously alive in this one. I just love “Hanna’s” crisp, cool elegance and frenetic, nonsensical trajectory; that it’s all surface sheen and post-modern fairy tale largely devoid of debilitating generic clichés. You just have to imbibe its energy and go with it—and accept that pure formal movement in the arts, like poetry, music and dance, need little justification beyond themselves.
I suppose I could argue that “Hanna” is also a coming-of-age tale in the way that the eponymous character—the taciturn feral girl who has never heard recorded music, seen electric light or even had a friend—finds her own humanity; but that might seem a little perfunctory.
Or that the film self-consciously presents itself as a 21st-century fairy tale through its many broad hints and references to the Brothers Grimm (and going so far as to conclude in an abandoned theme park dedicated to their stories); but that, too, would seem beside the point.
No, “Hanna,” is ultimately too cool to bother hiding that it has little to say.
And, hey, what’s wrong with that?
Posted by Steven, Movie Librarian
