Review of Hanna

Despite Hanna's super-soldier lineage I found this to be just an amazing breath of fresh air in comparison to the glut of Superhero films which we now have in lieu of actual action movies. I'm a massive fan of Atonement so I'm not going to say this is a step-up for Joe Wright, but he's got control of the material in this film that is kind of remarkable. There are so many elements in play in this film which could dominate it (it's kinetic chase sequences, Blanchett's performance, Hollander's creepy as fuck henchman, that score, Ronan's phenomenal performance) but they all cohese together in a way that is just mind blowing. Really there's an energy and intensity to the film which is kind of amazing, and it's built on an honest to goodness emotional core. I was expecting this to be a kick-ass action film, but I was just completely drawn in by both Saorise Ronan's performance (she's now got two of my favourite performances of 2011 under her belt) and the weird meta-family relationship between Hanna, Erik and Marissa.

The visual design is amazing, in fact the sequence where Hanna is escaping from the base felt like something Spike Jonze or Michael Gondry might have cooked up. Just breathtakingly well done, in fact with the blaring (and awesome) Chemical Brothers soundtrack it reminded me a lot of this music video.



I mean I could go on for paragraphs just about the framing in this film, little touches like the camera tilting up to show Hanna leaping between containers from below, or the amazing tracking shot which shows the geography of the containers as Marissa interogattes the family, or Eric Bana's tracking shot of bone breakage. Like I wrote earlier it's just a director in complete control of a film and it's exhilirating.

9/10