Skip to main content

Hanna

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, and Cate Blanchett
Directed by: Joe Wright
Screenplay by: Seth Lochhead and David Farr

   If you like a movie that is somewhat obscure, "Hanna" is the perfect movie.  It's action packed, and off beat.
  A 16 year old girl, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), who lives with her father, Erik Heller (Eric Bana), possibly a rogue CIA operative, is trained to be a badass teenage assassin in the great white north.  Her target, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), a high ranking CIA operative who once worked with Heller.  All Hanna must do is flip a switch that tells Marissa where she and Heller are.  They split up and meet somewhere in Berlin where they plan to kill Marissa.  Meanwhile, she's got the best people in the agency after both of them.  This sends Hanna all across Europe where she meets a family that picks her up and takes her most of the way to Berlin.  The big question: What's going to happen to both of them once they meet Marissa?
   The acting is awesome.  All the actors deliver very strong performances in their respective roles.  Ronan makes everyone she fights seem extraordinarily weak.  The fight scenes are rather short in this film.  Although they are short, they are thrilling and action packed.
   Another positive is the score.  It's completely different than what I would have expected.  After seeing the trailer, I thought it had to be interesting because I had never heard of the Chemical Brothers.  They create a techno score as opposed to the orchestrated epic music we are used to hearing in the background of action thrillers similar to this.  It feels like you're watching a fight, but at the same time, you're in a night club.  Techno music and fight scenes are two aspects of film that don't usually go together very well, but the Chemical Brothers have made them work together extraordinarily well.
   Some of the cinematography is excellent as well, but in other parts it's too shaky and can easily make one in the audience dizzy.  In one scene, Heller gets off a bus and walks into a subway station across the street and the camera never cuts.  It's about two minutes of an awesome scene similar to a scene in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (the scene where the main character goes into the restaurant from the taxi).
   The story is rather unclear at a few parts.  How do Heller and Hanna get to some places?  We see that they are in places like Berlin, Spain, or Morocco, but how do they get there?  It's not always clear.  Also, some of the characters are not well developed, like Heller.  I said that he is possibly a rogue CIA operative because it seems like his most likely occupation.  We don't really know why he is running from Marissa, and why she wants to capture him, or what he really does.
   Overall, I really enjoyed this film.  I say, see it before it goes on DVD.  I'm not usually one for films that aren't that mainstream, but this is now one of my favorite indy films.  I hope to see more films from Joe Wright in the future.
   This film gets an A-.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Magnificent Seven

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, and Peter Sarsgaard Directed by: Antoine Fuqua Written by: Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto      Remakes are funny things.  They can go either way.  On one hand, they can be like last year's Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that critics and audiences adore; a film that will live on as a cinematic masterpiece.  Remakes can also go in the direction of this year's rendition of Ben-Hur , one that critics and audiences will likely forget.       The Magnificent Seven some might say is an unnecessary remake.  It's a remake of an original that's based on another film, Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic,  Seven Samurai, in which seven samurai soldiers are hired by a town to keep them safe from raiding bandits.  This time, there are no raiding bandits, and there are not seven sword-wielding soldi...

Don Jon

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Glenne Headly, Brie Larson, and Tony Danza Directed and written by: Joseph Gordon-Levitt     To the gentlemen with significant others, clear your internet history BEFORE you see this movie with them.     Jon Martello (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has an interesting life.  He cares about only a few things; his apartment, family, church, friends, girls, and porn, especially the porn.  He's nicknamed "Don" because he hooks up with the most attractive girls every weekend.  One night at the club, he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson).  She's different from all the other girls Jon hooks up with.  She wants more than just a happy ending one night, meaning Jon's going to have to change his game if he wants to get with her.  And as much as he likes her, he likes his porn even more.  She hates that he watches porn, so something's going to have to give.     Don Jon is ...

Flight

Starring: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, John Goodman, and Bruce Greenwood Directed by: Robert Zemeckis Screenplay by: John Gatins       For those of you who have any fear of flying, even the tiniest fear, you will never want to fly on an airplane again after seeing this film.       Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) saves a commercial airplane from a truly horrific crash, in which only a few people are killed.  Almost everyone survives, including himself.  The stunt he pulls to save the plane is nothing short of a miracle, but an investigation into the crash reveals something that could send Whitaker to prison.  Not only is he going to be responsible for the people who were killed in the crash (which will send him to prison on manslaughter charges), but he was also found to be drinking the night before and the morning of the flight.       The actual plane crash takes place only twenty minutes or so...