Hanna

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: April 8th, 2011 (limited)

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchet Hollander, Olivia Williams

Directed by: Joe Wright

Premise: Raised by her father, an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets.

[polkablues]

This will either end up being The Professional but with more action, or Salt but with a kid.  Either way, I'll see it.

[Stefen]

This looks awesome.

[matt35mm]

I saw this tonight and thought it was pretty fabulous. I'm a fan of Joe Wright, and he's done some pretty strong work here. I'll say that the Chemical Brothers score does a lot of the heavy lifting for the action scenes, which are good and effective but not as jaw dropping as I was hoping. It's really in all the other parts of the film that it shines. Strange and beautiful, with wonderful performances and well choreographed scenes. When Wright is on full form with his blocking and shot design, it all works together like a dance, and there's not many people who are doing it better right now. Saoirse Ronan is perfect in the role; you never want to take your eyes off of her and her otherworldliness. The writing is pretty solid, if not particularly original.

Heartily recommended, though. A fun time at the movies, and at times, really quite artful.

[modage]

Yeah, this was pretty awesome.

from my blog:

They really don't make them too much like this anymore. Imagine Jason Bourne as a 16 year old girl in a 1997 film directed by Danny Boyle and you're getting close to how weird and wonderful this movie is. To say there's nothing like it would be an overstatement as it definitely bears some resemblance to Luc Besson's "The Professional," (where Natalie Portman got her start as a pre-teen assassin in training), but in reality there is nothing else like it today. The film was directed by Joe Wright, the filmmaker responsible for "Pride & Prejudice" and "Atonement" and it's an exciting change of pace for him. It's a thrill watching Wright adapt his style onto a completely different type of film while still retaining his trademarks: a great cast, some really impressive long tracking shots.

Saoirse Ronan (from "Atonement" and "The Lovely Bones") stars as the 16 year old Hanna, who has spent her entire life being raised by her father Erik (Eric Bana) to be the perfect assassin. As he realizes she's going to want to leave home someday he allows her to make the choice on when she leaves the nest, but warns her that once she does there's no turning back. The reason there is no turning back is Marissa, (a ruthless Cate Blanchett), a CIA operative looking to cover up their existence for mysterious reasons that aren't revealed until later on. Yes, the performances are over-the-top but the whole film is meant to be kind of a fairy tale with Blanchett standing in for the Wicked Witch.

It's an action film and an art film, a fairy tale and an on-the-run chase film. The reason "Hanna" is really so exciting is because it reminded me of the left of center, genre-bending films in the 90s. When non-action directors like Luc Besson, Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle first made their steps into genre filmmaking the results were thrilling. Even the electronic (and loud) score by The Chemical Brothers seems to harken back to that period. It's thrilling because it invests you in character and because it doesn't feel like anything else today. This was probably my favorite film so far this year.

[pete]

I was disappointed.

as a drama, it was way too obvious. it also dwells way too much on the metaphors and really didn't develop any character.
as an action movie - it was three dudes chasing one girl who's supposed to be the killing machine for most of the movie.
and the fighting's pretty pretty fake. I appreciated the proclivity to long takes, but Eric Bana's one take fight was a fucking joke.

as soon as he voluntarily threw himself at the pillar when the bad guy put his hand on him, I knew we were dealing with amatuers.

[RegularKarate]

I don't know that I was disappointed, but I again find myself agreeing with Pete to a lesser extent.

Overall, I liked the film, but the balance is a little off.  I think if you gave Wright a better screenplay he could make a great action film (and yes, Pete, he would need some better fight choreography too), but this doesn't quite win as an action movie and falls short as an arty drama.

The thugs chasing Hanna were way too boring.  The whistling and such is just played out bad-guy filler.
The only relationship we really got to feel was between Hanna and her new friend.  All the others were just blandly told to us.

It was almost there, I still really like Wright's pacing and rhythm and the music was great, but it just needed to work a little harder.

[Gold Trumpet]

The short, I loved it. The fluid style, continuous change of tone and movements, and attention to detail in every scene made me think the generics of the action were less than important. They are secondary considerations for me. Joe Wright pulls a Richard Lester and makes a superficially fun movie deft in style references and camera tricks for the entire length of a movie. It's very hard to do. However, because the film is so style driven, some scenes will feel out of date within 5 years. They will look like products of their time. However, what this movie does very well is make the tonal changes more believable and interesting. A film like Domino wants to infuse a million measures of style into a human story that registers on every level of personal change for a character. Some elements of the film are successful and some are not. In that film, too many scenes were too conventional. In this film, it works because there is an added measure of irreverence since Hanna is not human in normal regards. The story treats her as such. It makes comedic meat out of the sociological disconnect in her character. When it tries to hit home with a personal moment for her, it focuses on just one thing about her relationship with her father. It makes that scene more believable and heartfelt.

This isn't saying much. The paragraph above is cliff notes to all the things I feel and think. I need to do a real piece for my blog to hash through more to make it make cognizant sense. Will report back soon.

[Mr. Merrill Lehrl]

Joe Wright pulls a Richard Lester

When modage said "They really don't make them too much like this anymore" I thought about Lester and other playful, adventurous filmmakers/films.  

Because the high point of this film for me was the escape with Escape 700 by the Chemical Brothers - I was abruptly hooked into the film and thought it was going to be expressionistic and daring and kind of shameless (like I wanted it to be).  But unfortunately as the film went on I wiggled off the hook because of concessions made, and ultimately felt more like pete/RegularKarate.

The story's a bunch of goofy spy nonsense, for one thing, and silly, hermetic, over-explained worlds roll right over me.  They're difficult for me to invest myself in.  I thought, like Inception, there were too many pauses w/explanations, which drained some of the intensity and momentum.

That said, I may theater hop to see just the Escape 700 scene again.  

[picolas]

spoils

i loved the first 2/3rds. the first third was indeed goofy spy nonsense, but it was aware enough to be fun, funny and inventive with it. the moment of the escape basically lowers the spy/action movie stakes because it becomes clear that hanna is unkillable, and closer to a cartoon character than any 'real' dangerous spy character. again, the movie is aware enough to become about something more than just a little girl being chased because that's not really important anymore. it transforms into the story of a girl who's never truly experienced anything beyond spy training, and also shows little flourishes of the government agent with a seemingly perverse personal connection to her mission. this was an unexpected step in a cool new direction, and was just a few scenes of development away from making hanna into something great. then comes the third third, where it devolves back into the generic chase movie, ignores the discoveries of the middle, and almost literally repeats the opening scene as some kind of "clever" end button. that part's OVER, joe wright! i thought you knew.. i really wish hanna had evolved those first few ideas rather than falling back on itself and becoming the very thing it was cleverly referencing.. soooo close. i still really liked it, but am disappointed for what it could have been.

ps. it took me a minute to recognize that guy from in the loop... amazing.

[SiliasRuby]

This is what Action Movies should be. Loved every inch of this film and it sincerely blew me away. I really have no words after seeing it.

[Gold Trumpet]

Joe Wright pulls a Richard Lester

The story's a bunch of goofy spy nonsense, for one thing, and silly, hermetic, over-explained worlds roll right over me.  They're difficult for me to invest myself in.  I thought, like Inception, there were too many pauses w/explanations, which drained some of the intensity and momentum.

Sorry for late reply, but just noticed this:

The story is a breezy stylistic critique of spy movies. It does not fully diverge from a memorable spy storyline. If it did, it would be something else. The film manages to keep expectations off kilter and find a personality to consistently imbalance the flow of what you would expect. You were looking for intensity and momentum? For me, that reminds me of what Francois Truffaut would lambast when he hated movies that pretended like they were going against style cliches but still fulfilled the worst expectations of the genre. This film just heightening the action and the effects of a spy doing spy things by the third act is an easy expectation.

Also, you like my nod to Richard Lester, but as a filmmaker, he consistently went against expectations in dry ways. The Knack is irreverent and a stylistic free for all with references, but the movie does have peaks and valleys with pace. Some moments in the film does not try to act like an energizer bunny. The film would be more pleasant if it did, but it doesn't. Also, How I Won the War is irreverent, but not much of the comedy is actually laugh out loud funny. Smirks ensure over some of the scenarios, but it feels like Lester is making a tonal commitment to just vortex the story into a deadpan world which isn't that much dissimilar to what Jacques Tati did in his late efforts. The difference is that Lester's work in How I Won the War is distinctly British for what he does.

Also, and this question may be most critical your criticism, but when did the film go into Inception mode and start to over explain itself? Inception is an intelligent work and impresses me more on repeated viewings, but the whole film is an evolving plot that ends up overwhelming the characters. The film is a full dedication to the plot as grounds for a tonal structure. The only major plot detail Hanna goes into is the history of physical abnormality and her unexpected relationship with Eric Bana as a character. Otherwise, the story is mostly based on smaller anecdotal moments with other characters. But the main aspect of a plot development is that the film does not develop a huge moralization pact with the story to change the early irreverent moments. It reminds me of La Femme Nikita and that movie finding a grain of emotional truth for an unlikely and ludicrous situation.

[pete]

I don't think it's a critique of spy movies, I don't think Joe Wright knows enough about the form to artfully critique it or say anything about it. Instead he thinks he's doing the genre a "favor" by going for some obvious stylish contradictions, which bordered on cliches - the whistling "colorful" villain is amongst the worst of his decisions.

And actually in my mind, Joe Wright and Zack Snyder are really two sides of the same cheap coin (though the blog people giddily blew some line Joe Wright said against Snyder way out of proportion), they both thought they were doing the "serious" material a favor by adding obvious and lavish touches. The dramatically limp one take shot in Atonement, to me, was the same as Snyder's (and America's) re-discovery of the speed ramp. And every sequence in this film that was cut like a trailer (I mean, most action films are cut like trailers now, but this one especially went out of its way to cut like a trailer, including fading out from one shot to the next, in an effort to create some excitement) but I could still tell that they were filming the same ol' stunts.

They think the stuff Tarantino or those Matrix bros do is easy. the most obvious give-away to these hackey attempts of re-invention is always the music they choose to go with the action sequences. oh matrix and kill bill, you've done wonders for directors who listen to their ipods while jogging.

I think, as time goes on, I've come to realized that the third Bourne movie was a fluke, and most movies that start with that kind of premise are either too meathead (like Taken) or too pansied (like Hanna) to go toe-to-toe with the thoughtful, stylish action movies they all pretend to be.

the only film industry out right now that's doing artful, thoughtful, playful, yet still high-octane action movies, is South Korea, and they too, come up with a long list of doo-doos each year. These movies require handing big chunks of money and resource to young, green dudes, and Hollywood's studio system just can't stomach that. Instead you got Joe Wright and Zack Snyder doing their mickey rooney act, pretending to be fresh.

[Gold Trumpet]

It's a critique. Godard established an idea of criticism in film is you can delve into genre films and turning standard stories on their head by just venting them through unexpected style mechanisms. It doesn't have to be cognitive in the sense that it leads to "ideas" by the end. In fact, for early part of his career, Godard bellied a lot of his filmmaking by trying to make his films feel more improvisational. A lot of Hanna is filmed through reflex manners where Wright is quoting a number of films and periods I never thought could mesh seamlessly enough into a spy thriller, but somehow, they do. The first two major parts (in the woods and Hanna's initial escape) takes a lot from two periods of filmmaking, but after he varies the quotes scene by scene a lot more. It becomes less readable. Much of the film can feel somewhat standard, but the working train of thought throughout the film is that every scene is being projected through a different stylistic lens that isn't standard for our expectations.

I think you're looking for something different. Ultimatum is a fine movie, but it's incomparable to this film.

[pete]

I just think the film failed to do what it set out to do; the execution was sloppy, and from the lack of attention to details that should be considered "basic" in a film like this, the film gives away both its limits and its ambition. He did not "turn the story on its head"; he had a premise that was more interesting than the storytelling. It didn't worked seamlessly; this film garnered so much attention because of how heavy-handed it was, and how, once again, Wright condescends the genre by putting it through a different soundtrack or dressing bad guys up in funny clothes. I'm sure a lot of people find fault with this argument because it's essentially what I think about Let the Right One In as well; one can't merely merge two or three standard/predictable elements and expect a good movie somehow to magically appear; but strangely they work on certain people.

and I can't imagine how you'd give this film a pass while calling Inglorious Basterds a piece of shit, if you're so into critique of genre films (as if just the form of a critique will pardon a film of its sloppy execution.)

two films that I could think of that would better fit your description of genre meshing or genre critique, aside from very flashy movies like the Tartantino ones, are Julia and Lust, Caution. The former is a thriller that takes all the threats in a standard thriller seriously; for example, Tilda Swinton's titular character is a TRUE alcoholic, as opposed to a hero who merely drinks. The latter, Lust Caution, puts the "femme fatale" myth under the microscope, and dissects it, down to the brutal depiction of sex, and shows exactly what it must take to turn a normal person into a sex object, but in the scope of an espionage film.

a critique should offer depth and analysis and context and a point of view, no? Instead of just quoting or using counterpoints? A critique through the creative process should at least be competent in the basic cinematic language that it's critiquing, no? Hanna, on its most basic level, fails to be a thriller - its storytelling falls apart and relies on sleights-of-hands that distract the viewer (and probably the filmmakers as well), some of whom may even find the sleights of hands welcoming, but nevertheless, I can't imagine the film to actually contain all the intellectual prowess that you speak of.