I know, something that isn’t Doctor Who… this is so exciting that I put a picture in...
This is essentially a movie about an individual with highly honed assassination skills hunting those responsible for said highly trained assassin skills, with very limited knowledge on why said hunting is occurring. Basically the Bourne Identity, with a blonde, teenage girl as the assassin.
However, while that comparison stands, the more the film goes on, the more you realise that it’s not the Bourne Identity with a blonde girl, it’s what the Bourne Identity could have been.
Don’t get me wrong, the Bourne Identity’s good, but this film schools it on how to be a CIA action-thriller.
It opens with a 14-year-old girl living with her father in the wild, surviving off hunting animals and living with basic necessities. It quickly becomes evident that this girl isn’t just trained in animal hunting, but a variance of martial arts, a mastery of almost every European language that exists (or at least the ones that’ll be needed for this film) and a honed sharpness paired with a near sadistic fascination with death (as seen through a nice shot of her saying what I bloody hope becomes a catchphrase, should this turn into a series of films).
In fairness, those who like the fast pace of the Bourne films are not going to be thrilled by the opening of this film. While in those films, there’s quite a lot of guidance to get the audience through the opening, the writers of Hanna prefer to keep the objects of her motivations as ambiguous as possible for almost 20 minutes of the film. This slow burn start does get a bit frustrating and I got the impression that it everything I learnt during it could have been conveyed a lot faster, with some choice editing.
But it was worth it!
Saoirse Ronan acts her 17-year-old socks off nailing the role of protagonist Hanna, blending her sharp sadistic assassin-nature exceptionally well with her naivety and general lack of social ability. The main thing I liked about this character was the way in which she was well…a girl…I know, weird thing to like about a character but let me explain. As the action-thriller genre has been dominated by male writers for so long, when the task of writing a female protagonist arises, they generally end up fucking it up and just writing an androgynous character, who starts out in a kind of tom-boyish way, but by the end of the film seems to wholly be a man trapped in a woman’s body. Seriously, watch the Alien movies and consider whether the character of Riply would be majorly different if she were played by a man.
Cate Blanchett’s antagonist (professional CIA agent Marissa) comes across as a far better villain than the Bourne films ever produced (in fact I pretty sure that the whole trilogy has the same villain - different people, same motivation, same haircut, seriously the three villains across the whole Bourne trilogy have exactly the same haircut, that’s taking unimaginative to a ridiculous level).
The main strength of the character of Marissa is her humanity. While she occupies the position of the person responsible for the nasty circumstances in which the protagonist lives, she demonstrates some guilt over it, unlike the unrepentant “patriots” of the Bourne movies and the greedy, selfish super villains of the Bond films.
Eric Bana is good in his supporting role, but does occasionally turn up with little to do.
This is easily one of the best action-thrillers I’ve seen in a long time and it gains a stamp of highly recommended .
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