Movie Review: Hanna

Another action thriller movie is about to hit the big screen this October brought to you by Columbia Pictures. 

Hanna is a film about an innocent looking, charming teenage girl assassin who’s ten times deadlier than Le Femme Nikita.

The movie stars Saoirse Ronan, a not-entirely newcomer in the silver screen industry who is hitting hard punches with her acting talent and action skills at a very young age. She first became popular when she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film Atonement in which she co-starred with Kiera Knightly.

In this new movie, Ronan plays a teenage girl, Hanna, who was raised by a rouge CIA agent Erik (Eric Bana) in the sub-zero temperatures of North Finland. Exposed in extreme environment, Hanna was home schooled and trained by her known father Eric all there is to know to be an effective assassin. After a turning point in their lives, the girl who’s an expert in hand-to-hand combat and is fluent in multiple languages decides to seek her target, Marissa, played by Cate Blanchett who a CIA officer with a dark secret.

The film is directed Joe Wright, the same director of the highly acclaimed Atonement, who took the film to different places crossing several countries from Morocco to Germany. This movie is action-packed on all levels and most of the choreography and execution of the fighting scenes were also superb and very realistic. Cate Blanchett also made an outstanding performance as the villain.

Eric Bana, who has first received popularity in the film Hulk, performed his character well in this movie. One distinction of his talent is his European accent, although the hand-to-hand fighting scenes in the subway with five opponents were not as impressive. I found the execution of the choreography was not as fluid. I can’t help comparing it with Matt Damon‘s hand-to-hand fight scenes in Bourne Identity which became my standard on the quality of fighting choreography.

On the other hand, the general story and plot are distinctive compared to other similarly crafted espionage-type of plots. One of the things I like in a movie are the unexpected twists in the story and this film surely has lots of it – the feeling of unpredictability. As to the value that was impressed in the film is the young girl’s redemption to have a normal life.

After watching the movie, I imagined immediately how a sequel will come out if there would be one. For me, the story is so good that a conclusion would be premature. The film has a lot of potential for a good sequel. All in all, I consider this film to be worth watching and that Saoirse Ronan, as young as she is, will probably have more projects in the action movie genre in the future.