HANNA!

I saw this movie on Monday night and it about KILLED me to wait all week to tell you about it! The studios have this pesky rule about holding reviews until the release date of the film. I apparently seem to be the only person who follows this rule, but I really don’t want to lose my screening privileges so I remain obedient. Now, on to the awesomeness of the film that is Hanna…

The movie's all about the girl, so I'll start by telling you a few things about her. Ask Hanna where she’s from and she’ll give you a litany that includes her address, her school, the names of her best friends and her dog. Ask her to converse with you in Arabic, German, Italian, English or other languages and she’ll happily oblige. But if you turn on the light in a hotel room she’ll stagger back in astonishment. She’s never turned on an electric light. Ask her what kind of music she likes and you’ll get a blank stare. Hanna has never heard a single note of music.  Since she was a toddler, she’s lived off the land in the forests of Finland near the Arctic Circle. Alone with her devoted father, Hanna has learned as much as she can about life without ever actually living it.

Hanna’s father, Erik Heller, is a rogue CIA agent who has spent the last decade and a half of his life training and protecting his precious daughter from forces that would destroy them both. But as Erik knows all too well, kids grow up. He has educated Hanna in geography, history and the modern languages to prepare her for the world she must face on her own. And oh yeah, he’s focused on one more subject: the art of assassination. Born as part of a CIA project gone horribly awry, Hanna is a target for the ruthless Marissa Wiegler who will stop at nothing to see the child and her father dead.

Though it relies heavily on many conventions of the spy genre, Hanna is still a new kind of spy movie for a new kind of world. It’s gritty and stylized but still manages to stay organic in its story telling. It delivers characterization and emotion that we haven’t seen in an action movie since The Professional. (Except maybe The Bourne Identity, but that was based on a novel.) Hanna's airtight plot and razor-sharp dialogue never allow time for guessing whodunit or what’s coming next. (Random unnecessary disclosure: screenwriter Seth Lochhead is an alum of my alma mater, Vancouver Film School.)

The incredible cast includes Saorise Ronan, Cate Blanchett, the smokin' hot Eric Bana, Olivia Williams and Tom Hollander. Notice there are more females than males on that list. I’m so excited that there are several very strong female characters in this movie. Saorise Ronan’s “Hanna” can slaughter grown men in one moment and then tug on your heart strings with her purity of spirit in the next. Cate Blanchett’s “Marissa Wiegler” is so tightly wound that you don’t know whether to hate her or feel sorry for her. And as an intuitive, free-spirited mother, Olivia Williams’s “Rachel” comes the closest to understanding Hanna as she is rather than as she is intended to be. It’s out of Hanna’s relationship with Rachel’s family that moments of true emotion and humor enter her life.

Yeah, I said humor. This movie holds some genuine laughs on top of the action. Hanna is a really funny girl, though we rarely, if ever, see her laugh. That’s the kind of juxtaposition we see a lot of in this film. Director Joe Wright brilliantly weaves his themes of love and murder, innocence and destruction, strength and fragility into a symphony that elevates this movie beyond a typical blockbuster. He’s managed to take entertaining action and lift it into the realm of something much better: artful cinema.