Hanna

The rogue operative turning against the agency that created them is becoming an all too familiar trope in film and television, with the Bourne films providing something of a template. However, Hollywood’s latest offering, Hanna, attempts to set itself apart from your average spy-film fodder by putting a 16-year-old girl at the centre of the film, in the hope that the mixture of her ferociousness and underlying vulnerability will bring something new to the genre.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has been raised in the Arctic conditions of a forest deep into Northern Europe by her ex-CIA Agent father, to be the ultimate fighting machine. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Hanna’s father, Erik Heller (the similarly named Eric Bana), turned to a life of exile when he reneged on a controversial CIA training programme that he was involved in, run by the flame-haired Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett). When Wiegler learnt of Erik’s betrayal she tracked him down and tried to kill him and his family, only succeeding in killing his wife - Hanna’s mother.

Since that day, Erik has been training Hanna in the hope that together they can one day take out Marissa Wiegler and return to a normal life. Thus, when Hanna decides she is ready for the task, father and daughter separate and begin a mission that takes them across Europe, as they try to lure Wiegler into the open and kill her.

Whilst Hanna may have been taught everything about hand-to-hand combat and firearms, she knows very little about the outside world - as is evident when she becomes overwhelmed using electricity for the first time while lodging in Morocco (the flickering lights combined with the sounds of the television and a boiling kettle become too much). The film balances Hanna’s discoveries as a naive teenage girl with her experiences as a manufactured killing machine.

As a result of this balancing act the tone of the film oscillates somewhat, as scenes of adrenaline-fuelled action and violence sit alongside comedic or poignant ones - with the latter largely occurring during the middle of the film, where Hanna travels alone across Europe. While these shifts in the tone of the movie are handled well by its young lead, who switches between ruthless assassin and innocent adolescent brilliantly, the film can fare less well.

In one scene we’ll be in danger of sensory overload: as Hanna attempts to outrun a series of armed drones chasing her, the bass of the Chemical Brothers’ soundtrack shakes the cinema, and the camera switches between shots at a dizzying rate; in others we’ll follow Hanna’s sleepy journey through France with a British family and their comically brattish daughter. There’s nothing wrong with shifts in mood and pace, but Joe Wright has something of a schizophrenic directorial style in his first real attempt at an action movie.

Thus, in loitering too long on Hanna’s diversions from her mission, the film lags a little on the way to its conclusion, which loses some of its impact as a result. Nevertheless, the film’s climax still musters some of the tension of earlier scenes as, though Cate Blanchett’s Marissa Wiegler may be two dimensional, her cold and unflinching nature makes her incredibly hard to read and the perfect match for Hanna. The journey to this point has similarly enjoyable moments, particularly during the film’s occasional ventures into all-out-action, where its hammering soundtrack and experimental style work well.

Overall, Hanna can at times prove to be an uneasy marriage between action and emotion. However, while the main body of the film can lose its direction, it ultimately remains watchable thanks to a compelling lead performance and the pulsating action pieces that lie at its heart.

See Hanna at City Screen, York. Check out the cinema's website for times and further details.

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