The movie HANNA takes itself far too seriously, especially with its forced fairy tale allusions!

The Hanna of the title is a fourteen year old girl who has been shacked up with her father in Lapland – somebody call child protection!
No, Lapland, Arctic Circle, reindeer, snow white – oops there’s the first of the fairy tale illusions. Before you can say Grim, she has shot an elk and there’s rose red on the ice.
Dad has been training Hanna in the art of survival – shootin, fishin,and fightin.
She is the product of enhanced scientific kiddie fiddling. We’re talking in utero. Her DNA has been messed with to the extent that she is GMA – a genetically modified assassin.
Let loose into the real world she is to flush out the evil queen CIA agent who killed her momma.

Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan who could have used her skills in her last picture THE WAY BACK in which Peter Weir put her through some gruelling ice-capades. Obviously, she has no hard feelings with frost or working with Australians as her father is played by Eric Bana and her nemesis by Cate Blanchett.
Blanchett tries to imbue her wicked queen character with some interesting quirks – she likes to make her gums bleed and seems to have somewhat of a foot fetish.
The most interesting characters in the movie are the family that “adopts” Hanna after she escapes her forced rendition to Morocco and unknowingly grease her re-entry into Europe.
Mum and Dad are played by Olivia Williams and Jason Fleming respectively and respectfully.

Had Hanna stayed with this family of New Agers grappling with old age responsibilities and explored their eldest child’s homo eroticism towards her, the film would surely have been far more fascinating than its dull slide into chase and biffo, a sort of muddled RUN, LOLA, RUN mixed with the BOURNE franchise!

Richard Cotter

28th July, 2011