Viewed in
2012
Formats
DVD
Premise
Saoirse Ronan stars as a German teenager raised as an assassin, in a hunt-or-be-hunted battle with CIA operatives.
Liked
Strong performances, jaw-dropping one-takes, eye and ear candy.
Disliked
Distracting score, illogical plot points.
Thoughts
An entertaining, stylish action/spy thriller.
Ronan was perfectly cast as the lead. She was cold, smart, deadly, unaware, aloof, and at the same time, you can see the oddly innocent inner young girl coming through her poker face. The rest of the cast was strong as well. Eric Bana was tough and tender at the same time. It was interesting to watch the regal Cate Blanchett play a bad guy with a Southern drawl. Tom Hollander seemed to be channelling Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange. Unfamiliar names, but slightly familiar faces, Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng put in some fun moments as quirky parents caught in the web.
Often, this was a delightful visual and aural experience. There were some fantastically complex one-take fight sequences over multiple locations, one from the streets to underground metro, another a cat-and-mouse pursuit in a multi-tiered shipping yard. The film makers played with lighting to create some fun eye candy with shadows. Production design and location scouting found some awesome surreal fairy tale-like environments for lethal chases and fights. The Chemical Brothers pumped up the adrenaline and style to another level.
But at the same time, I felt The Chemical Brothers was a bit too much. During certains scenes the score literally stole the show when it shouldn't. Now, you could argue that they succeeded in Fight Club, but here, this movie was less dreamlike, so the score shouldn't be hijacking our attention in key moments.
My other big problem was the film's logic. I'll buy the occasional bad movie physics and perfect coincidence about the English family. However, just how fast characters were able to easily transport from Northern Europe to Morocco to Germany simply felt implausible. In addition, why was Blanchett's go-to assassin a flamboyant LGBT, if only for style? And where did that old clown dude come from?
Nevertheless, the good strongly outweighed the bad. So ignore some of the plot and distracting score, and you should find Hanna to be a smarter-than-average assassin flick, and fun treat for the eyes and ears.
