Joe Wright made a prestigious debut with Pride and Prejudice a few years ago, and followed that success with the McEwan-adaptation Atonement. Then came The Soloist, which no-one seemed to care for (I still haven't seen it). Breaking free from (melo)drama, Wright recently reached into genre filmmaking, delivering the wannabe art house actioner Hanna. It may be the most ridiculous, frustrating action film you'll see all year, and marks a low point for Wright.
The pitch is simple and effective: German spy Erik (Eric Bana) raised his daughter Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) away from civilisation and technology in a cabin in the woods near Finland. She knows little of emotion but much about killing, geography and programmed deception. Ronan plays her like the souped-up version of the robotic Vicky in the 1980s sitcom "Small Wonder". Hanna is a one-adolescent killing machine, trained to murder one person in specific: Marissa (Cate Blanchett, putting in a performance reminiscent of Javier Bardem's hair in "No Country for Old Men" and the caricature she played in "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"). Years earlier, Marissa knew Erik and then Things Went Wrong. Hanna must fix it while her father tends to business from his own side.
Hannah is a tonally confused bore, with some of the worst action scenes I've seen in a while. Wright can't seem to control his camera and overdoes it with the expressive use of the apparatus: where Hanna is panicking and in danger, the camera twirls around her body and then twirls around her face a well. The non-stop movement exhibits the lack of actual drama that characterises the entire film. Soldiers storm after her; she evades them, and we hear them grumble, "Where is she?" and "Where did she go?" What is this, a Roger Moore Bond movie? Through a serious of mind boggling coincidences Hanna makes it to where she needs to get, and I wondered how many times sheer coincidence can save a life or propel a movie forward.
And then there are the badly written secondary characters, a family Hanna meets and utilises in her favour headed by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng. I guess these characters are supposed to show some measure of the family life Hanna never experienced, at least for a moment, but they are so removed from the universe the film inhabits that it's as if they walked in from a vacation movie starring Chevy Chase.
Earlier this year the Sylvester Stallone spectacle The Expendables at least knew what it was: a cheesy 1980s style action movie. Hanna seems to be under the impression that it's Action as Art and collapses under its own pretense, devoid of emotion or, to be honest, good dialogue. Considering the talent involved in front of the camera and behind the scenes, the film is a great disappointment. Here's hoping that Wright returns to form with his return to literature as he adapts Anna Karenina for possible release in late 2012.
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