Hanna Review

For better and for worse, “Hanna” isn’t your typical action movie.

On one hand, I figured that would be the case as soon as I saw it was directed by not-quite-action-maestro Joe Wright (“Pride and Prejudice”, “Atonement”). On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed those two movies and I’m always interested to see a new sensibility brought to action movies. (Imagine if Christopher Nolan had never gotten a shot at Batman.)

In this case, the result is surprisingly thin on action (especially in the movie’s middle section), but heavy on intriguing, Euro-flavored stylistic touches, including a fantastic soundtrack by the Chemical Bros. that often appears to reflect the characters’ emotional and mental states.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a 16-year-old girl raised in the Finnish wilderness by her father Erik (Eric Bana), a former CIA agent. For her entire life, Hanna has been isolated from the rest of the world and trained to become an assassin: more specifically, she’s been trained to assassinate witchy CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett).

I use the word “witchy” to describe Marissa because one of the flourishes Wright incorporates in his movie is staging the world of “Hanna” as some sort of fractured fairy tale. (I guess Marissa could just as easily be the story’s Big Bad Wolf.)

Unfortunately, the fairy tale template, kickass soundtrack and Wright’s occasionally fancy camera tricks — I LOVED the director’s continuous shots in the scene where Bana takes out a bunch of bad guys and with Hanna’s fight in the shipping yard — are mostly there to liven up a story that’s not incredibly compelling.

Throughout “Hanna”, we get hints of the junior assassin’s back story, but by the time it pays off and we find out the truth about Hanna’s past, it almost seems like an afterthought with all the other weirdness going on.

Blanchett and her red wig give an (intentionally) over-the-top performance that isn’t ever grounded in any sort of reality, so I felt that it lacked context. Basically, she’s just mythically and chillingly evil only because the story demands it. Bana, meanwhile, has some strong father-daughter moments with Ronan, but is otherwise a blank slate. I understand that works for his character, but it doesn’t give us a whole lot to hold on to.

Tom Hollander livened things up considerably as Isaacs, the eccentric baddie Marissa tasks with capturing Hanna. In keeping with the rest of the movie, the character was tonally wacky — he and his henchmen looked like they had a hit song in the early 90’s — but at least he was funny as hell.

Still, the star of the show was Ronan (an Oscar nominee for “Atonement”) who is absolutely sensational as Hanna.

As Hanna discovers the world for the first time (well, Morocco and Germany, at least), Ronan does a terrific job of playing the confusion, wonder and terror her character would be feeling. Although I didn’t care for the more famous, actors in the movie, I was totally into Hanna’s accidental and touching friendship with a British girl named Sophie (an excellent Jessica Barden) and her squabbling British family.

On top of that, it doesn’t hurt that she makes for a completely credible ass kicker.

I really like that Hanna is an original creation — giving us a break from a sequel, reboot, spinoff, etc. — and I absolutely believe the character would be worth re-visiting. (Especially if Ronan gets to play the hell out of her again.) I also wouldn’t mind seeing Wright take another crack at an action movie.

I just hope that next time Ronan’s performance and Wright’s style are used to support a more substantial movie.

Hanna…B-