Cool Hanna

The tagline for this movie, "young. sweet. innocent. deadly." is so accurate, it’s great how it completely describes the entire movie without spoiling it. I found Hanna to be an extremely cool movie that took the breath out of me during the first 10 minutes.
Sure, the genetically modified super human lead has been done countless of times before. Naturally, there’s always got to be this big bad villain that wants to get its clutches on this wonder of science. But never has a killing machine with no fear had this perfect appearance of an ingénue. In fact, when she’s not killing, she is clearly the epitome of an ingénue. Saoirse Ronan does a magnificent job of portraying the naive, and contradicting titular character. She really is vulnerable and simple minded, but once the fighting starts, you can't help but be in awe of her precise and lethal nature. She kind of reminded me of Leon from the Professional because they’re both childlike, even though they’re no longer innocent. They both exude this lost bunny in the woods look, but step too close and the last thing you’ll see are the sharp fangs they’ve got.
With such a protagonist, only Cate Blanchett could give life to the corrupted Marissa Wiegler and be an effective and fitting antagonist. The way she presented this role is similar to how she handled Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, only this time, she’s not demented, just plain evil.

As usual, Eric Bana continues to do what he does best, as the stoic, mysterious and great fighter, Erik Heller, He is perfect as Hanna's father and mentor. The only problem is I couldn’t really feel the bond or relationship between them as father and daughter. I’ve observed that Eric has this problem in all of his movies that I’ve seen. He never really manages to make any relationship real or convincing to the audience. Even though I think he’s a good actor, this is why I don’t really like watching him. This time it didn’t distract me much because the film didn’t focus so much on them.

Although I like this film terribly, it lacked a script that would have made it perfect. The first thing that I noticed is that although the three main characters are gorgeous in their roles, the film felt somewhat cold. I think it wasn’t enticing enough to hook the audience; it didn’t leave a strong lasting impression because the emotions weren’t able to translate well on screen. Usually in films, you either root for the hero or the villain, but in Hanna, I didn’t root for anyone, because I didn’t feel the need to. Don’t get me wrong, it was exciting, with the fast paced fighting, and slightly bloody killings. I liked it but I could have loved it.


6/10