First Hit: Saoirse Ronan was beautifully believable as Hanna, which made this film work.
The opening scene has Hanna, in deep snow and obviously in the far northern reaches of the planet, stalking a deer; her piercing grownup eyes watching the cautious deer foraging.
She releases an arrow which finds the deer in its chest. The deer runs and Hanna runs after it in the deep snow, by now the audience is aware that she has some extraordinary skills. The deer is dying, she apologies for not hitting the deer in the heart, pulls a gun and shoots the deer.
She guts the dear, collecting rib bones when a man appears behind her and says, “You’d be dead.” It is her dad Erik (played by Eric Bana) and they begin to fight. He is teaching her how to survive. They live in a minimal cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Hanna tells her dad that she is ready to leave. He digs up a box that has a switch on the top and tells her that her enemy will come after her the moment she flips this switch. She flips it; Erik packs a small bag, puts on a suit and heads out into the snow.
A US covert unit led by Marissa (played by Cate Blanchett), comes after Hanna. Capturing her they place her an a round observations cell. The agency sends in a woman pretending to be Marissa and Hanna kills her and then escapes the inescapable building.
The race now is on to capture Hanna and Erik. There are shots of Hanna that are amazingly haunting. Her look, lack of fear and her capability to learn quickly is amazing and all this from a young teenage girl.
Although there are some faults with the film, including the way Blanchett played Marissa, I enjoyed the whole film and the music by The Chemical Brothers fit the way it was shot and directed.
Ronan was amazingly cool, complex, and interesting to watch as Hanna. I could not think of another young teenage actress that could have pulled it off the way she did. Just some of her facial looks were powerful and haunting. Bana was very good as Hanna’s father. Blanchett or the way she was asked to play this role was the weak link in this film. Seth Lochhead and David Farr wrote an interesting script. Joe Wright didn’t quite have a handle on Blanchett’s role but all else was wonderful. I really liked the pacing, the use of different types of sets and buildings, and most of all how he made Ronan this perfectly normal/abnormal girl who also killed people.
Overall: This wasn’t a great film but it was good and very interesting to watch. I think it could have been a great film, but I’m not sure how.