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Hanna
| Released |
6 May 2011 |
| Director |
Joe Wright |
Starring
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Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Paris Arrowsmith, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemying, Jessica Barden |
| Writer(s) |
Seth Lochhead, David Farr |
Producer(s)
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Marty Adelstein, Leslie Holleran, Scott Nemes |
Origin
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United States, United Kingdom, Germany |
| Running Time |
111 minutes |
| Genre |
Thriller, action |
| Rating |
15A |
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The Ronanator!
Since she made her stunning breakthrough in Atonement, casting directors have struggled to know what to do with Carlow’s Saoirse Ronan. As an actress with an ‘old before her time’ quality, she’s expected to be the next Jodie Foster in making a seamless move into adult roles. She may well do, but for now she’s still a kid. So far her choices have been a bit on the weak side. She was pretty good as the lead in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, but the film itself was awful. She then starred alongside Colin Farrell and Ed Harris in Peter Weir’s The Way Back. Once again she held her own, but while the film was a worthy effort it was also dreadfully dull.
You can understand her agents wanting to spice things up with something a little different. But she’s way too good for the type of crappy teen comedies that most actors of her age get stuck in so why not give an action movie a go? Ronan even managed to get her old director from Atonement, Joe Wright, in on the gig. From a man who’s used to making weighty dramas like The Soloist and Pride and Prejudice, it’s an odd choice to make an action movie.
The action begins in a remote part of Siberia where Hanna (Ronan) is raised to be a killing machine by her ‘Papa’ Erik Heller (Eric Bana). Hanna dreams of a life outside this harsh environment but Erik has her obsessed by her mission to kill Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) a CIA agent he holds a grudge against.
When he finally considers Hanna to be ready, he allows her to flick a switch on a transponder to let Weigler know where she is (no, I can’t make any sense of that one either). Erik escapes with a plan to rendezvous with her in Berlin and Hanna is taken into CIA custody. Hanna then manages to escape from the CIA facility and finds herself in a remote part of North Africa.
She comes across an English family of tourists and makes friends with the daughter (Michelle Dockery). The parents (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) take pity on her and take her into their caravan. Meanwhile Wiegler has hired a blond mercenary (Tom Hollander) who along with some skinhead associates of his, goes after Hanna.
Okay, it’s an action movie so a crazy plot may be expected but even by their standards this film makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a truly bizarre piece of work and by the end you’re wondering exactly what sort of film Joe Wright was trying to make. It starts off at a cracking pace with the thumping dance score by The Chemical Brothers keeping things moving nicely. However after about half an hour it goes into a slump where nothing much happens as Hanna uses her interaction with the English family to discover herself as a young girl.
If the plot is bizarre, it’s nothing compared to the performances, which are just plain weird. Ronan and Bana can’t really do much with the main roles, where the direction seemed to just be 'speak with a mild German accent and look troubled'. Tom Hollander at least has a good laugh for himself as the mercenary but the standout performance is that of Cate Blanchett. The problem is that it’s only a standout in terms of being the worst of her distinguished career. God only knows what she and Wright were thinking, but she’s ridiculously over the top. She’s made up to look like Rosa Klebb from From Russia With Love, but he’s also given her a heavy Texan accent. It’s just a grotesque characterisation that carries no menace because it’s so nonsensical.
This is one surreal film that simultaneously bores and exasperates you at the same time. It would probably be best for Joe and Saoirse to stick to the weighty dramas from now on.
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Jim O’Connor |
