Review of Hanna (2011) by Halfwelshman — 01 Nov 2011

The most annoying thing about Hanna is that it's not complete incompetence that makes it a sub-par film. On the contrary, Joe Wright is clearly a talented director, his camerawork stylish and action well executed.

There's even a surprisingly good original soundtrack provided by the Chemical Brothers. The problem with Hanna is the storytelling, especially the extent to which we are asked to invest ourselves in an enigma.

We are often asked to do the same in similar thrillers where information is slowly revealed (such as in the Bourne Trilogy), but this can only work if you keep your audience hungry, with frequent tidbits of information that point towards the truth.

Hanna asks you to wait right until the conclusion, at which point you find out everything. After an engaging enough opening, it's a struggle to remain interested for a good hour and twenty minutes before anything concrete is revealed, and when you finally know what it's all about, you really no longer care.

The casting is a mixed bag - Saoirse Ronan and Eric Bana are both serviceable, and Cate Blanchett is entertaining with a Texan accent. Tom Hollander on the other hand is completely miscast as a gun-for-hire - he's supposed to be a threatening mercenary, but he looks like Jimmy Savile.

..and is less scary. There's also an incredibly annoying British family on holiday who Hanna tags along with for a while - I imagine they were meant to ground the story in some sense, but the tone of these scenes is so jarring in comparison to the rest of the film that it borders on hilarity.

So it's yet another dark thriller about a brainwashed teenage killing machine, and try as it might to be something different, Hanna is just a pale imitation of Nikita.