Synopsis:
Hanna has been brought up in the wilderness, hidden away from the modern world by her ex-CIA father. Trained as a soldier she is unlike any other teenage girl. She is sent into the world by her father to fulfil her purpose as an assassin.
Hanna represents something of a departure from Joe Wright’s previous projects such as Atonement and Pride and Prejudice and that can only be a good thing. He brings back Saoirse Ronan from Atonement and via her subsequent appearances in The Lovely Bones and The Way Back, she has certainly matured and developed into a very good actor indeed. She delivers a very solid performance as the eponymous Hanna and is certainly the star of the piece. Hanna is undoubtedly something we see far too infrequently, an original piece of work. That’s not to say that it doesn’t borrow elements from elsewhere, it does. There are clearly similarities with leading character heroines from Kick-Ass, Sucker Punch, Serenity and particularly Leon but Hanna also has much in common with the Bourne films. There are inevitably themes of lost youth but also of stolen identity, of a sinister, clandestine government agency cover-up conspiracy.
There is a lot more too. Hanna is a complex, multi-layered, multi-faceted, well constructed film that I’m sure will offer a lot more on a second viewing. There is a lot of fairy-tale symbolism which sits comfortably with Hanna’s lost childhood and maternal deprivation. There are well positioned flashbacks to explain the back story and relationships, and there is an element of humanity provided by Hanna’s burgeoning relationship with Sophie and her family, which provides a warm contrast to the colder, unforgiving setting of the rest of the film.
