Hanna film review
And this year’s “Oh shit I did not see that coming” award goes to…
Hanna. An original thriller by Seth Lochhead, and directed by Joe Wright. Not exactly household names; this is Lochhead’s first film, and whilst Wright has a substantial number of titles under his belt, he’s hardly known for action movies. His biggest previous success? Pride & Prejudice. Yeah.
Perhaps, then, it’s little surprise that the results feel a little clumsy in places. I’m not saying that to put you off of watching it, mind. I just wanted to get it out of the way, because I’m about to start gushing here. A lot.
Speaking of clumsy, the premise is one of those parts that at first blush seems a little trite; Hanna is a young teen girl who has been raised in the woods by her nutjob ex-spy father, and now longs to see the real world, and experience art and music and love and yaaaaaawwwwnnnn… yes, it’s yet another “sheltered protagonist goes on an adventure that leads them to discover life in the real world, testing their book knowledge and well hone training against the realities of the world.” We’ve been here before, it’s nothing new, and the opening thirty minutes or so feel like they’re really going to drag.
Or at least, they would, if not for the brilliant casting of Saoirse Ronan, the best young actress working in Hollywood today, bar none (I’m giving a close second to Haylee Steinfeld). Ronan is simply incredible; she has a boldness and a physicality to her that few actors ever achieve, and she can go from the most sparkling of smiles to the cold eyes of a killer in a heartbeat.
It’s Ronan’s captivating depth that draws you into the film, and carries you through a slightly clumsy (if stark and intriguing) opening, until the plot finally kicks off, and gun toting goons bust down Hanna’s door. It’s in the film’s first major set-piece, a balls to the wall prison escape action sequence, that the film really begins to shine. This is also where the story really starts to show it’s teeth; make no mistake, this is one of the bloodiest, nastiest, and most utterly depraved films ever to earn a PG rating. I’ve seen it described as “What if Jason Bourne was a sixteen year old girl”, but Jason Bourne never racked up anything like Hanna’s body-count.
Still, the comparison holds in all of the good ways; just like the first Bourne film, after an initial action fest to get you onto the edge of your seat, the film settles down into a surprisingly calm and thoughtful journey of self-discovery, with Hanna meeting and befriending an odd-ball family of holiday-makers, whose everyday quirkiness offers stark contrast with Hanna’s surreal upbringing. At it’s heart, the film is a classic coming of age story, and whilst the broader plot about Hanna’s origins feels a little ham-fisted, like something about a bad young-adult adventure story, it really doesn’t matter because the characters are so utterly engaging.
The film barrels into it’s final act with a series of confrontations, including a frighteningly raw face-off between Hanna and her father (another surprisingly capable performance from Eric Bana), all executed with a fury and energy that is utterly electrifying. Sadly, I was less impressed with the film’s antagonist, Marissa. Cate Blanchett’s performance is everything I would expect from one of the most brilliant actresses working in Hollywood today, but the character just feels flat and insipid. Almost cartoonishly evil. There are moments where flashes of personality shine through, but they are transitory at best.
In fact, the big shout outs for acting belong to Olivia Williams, and Jason Flemyng, both brilliant performers who have consistently failed to earn the kind of starring roles they truly deserve. Anyone who watched Joss Whedon’s failed experiment, Dollhouse, will remember Williams as Adelle DeWitt, easily one of the best things about that brilliant but sadly still-born idea, and Flemyng just keeps cropping up all over the place; most recently he has played Primus in Stardust, Thomas Button in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Malachi in the awesome Solomon Kane adaptation that still hasn’t managed to find a North American release. Equally deserving of credit is Jessica Barden, who plays Sophie, a young girl who befriends Hanna during the film’s middle act, ably assisting in the protagonist’s journey to adulthood. Sophie comes off, at first, as a gag character, the kind of “Ha-ha, Americans are dumb” one liner you’d expect from a Michael Bay movie, but the character grows in startling ways throughout the story, and Barden carries off moments of intimacy and terror that are equally unexpected.
Taken as a whole, Hanna is simply the kind of film that takes your breath away. It’s not all good, and indeed it’s often clumsy and faltering, but the sheer brilliance of it all just shines through. In places the cinematography draws far too much attention to itself, as if the director, clearly not used to pulling off action scenes, is trying too hard to be “edgy” and “experimental”, but you’ve barely enough time to roll your eyes before he pulls out some startling new trick that knocks you flat on your ass in astonishment.
Even where the cinematography falters, the sound design is simply staggering. The Chemical Brothers are to be commended for producing a dark, brutally atonal soundtrack, that constantly veers along the edge of not really being music at all; perfect for Hanna’s world, where music is the one thing she would most wish to experience. When she does, it cuts through like headlights in the darkness, perfect and crystalline, and utterly beautiful. Beyond the soundtrack, the attention to the sound design carries through to every scene; every sound of movement, the thunder of every gunshot, the sounds of moving cloth and skin on skin. The sensation of Hanna’s world carries through in the sound of the film, as much as in the visuals, if not more so, and it adds a dimension to the film that could have so easily been missed.
In the final reckoning, Hanna is, hands down, a must see film. For all the criticisms I could make, I find myself so thoroughly captured by the film’s wild brilliance, and relentless daring, that I simply don’t care about it’s flaws. After the stark excellence of Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lovely Bones’, it is a delight to see Saoirse Ronan knock one out of the park for the second time in a row, and I really am excited to see where this brilliantly talented young actress goes from here.
Get out and see it if you still can. Grab the DVD, if you can’t. It’s definitely worth your time.
