HANNA

“HANNA” (Saorise Ronan, Cate Blanchett & Eric Bana)

This is one of those films where you reach the point that you don’t care what happens to the characters or how it’s going to end because you JUST want it to be over with. And I felt that way about a half hour into the thing.
It opens with a disgusting scene of an elk being murdered by a little girl (Saorise Ronan as Hanna) This is followed by a scene of child abuse as Hanna’s father, Erik (Eric Bana) attacks like ‘Kato’ in the old Pink Panther films – the only enjoyment I got from this movie was when my mind yelled out, “Not NOW, Kato!” during this senseless scene.
Hanna murders an elk with no feelings of remorse, yet she wants her father to tell her that the dog the Russians sent into space in the 1950’s made it back to earth alive?
Hanna & her father live in a cabin in the Arctic tundra. They have no logical reason to exist this way, other than Erik telling the girl to flip the switch on the location finder box when she’s ready to leave.
Hanna is given a make believe background to recite if and when she is captured. When she flips the switch on the box, he father puts on a suit & a backpack & leaves her.
Hanna awaits the arrival of the military & murders several of them before deciding to go with them willingly (huh?)
Once ensconced in a military installation, she demands to speak to Marissa & when the woman arrives, Hanna crawls into her lap like a frightened child & then... well, sets in motion her plot to escape. This thin, frail child shoots her way out of a heavily guarded institution to an 80’s techno pop beat that would make The Pet Shop Boys(*) envious & then makes her clever getaway by latching onto the bottom of a speeding military vehicle. Pretty impressive, eh? Except they don’t show you HOW she was able to jump up from a hole & grab onto a speeding vehicle as it passed overhead – they just show you her in the hole & then the line of vehicles, panning down to Hanna clutching to the bottom of the last car. It’s not clever when they ask you to believe something implausible without showing how the trick was pulled off. It’s stupid & it makes you feel like they think you’re stupid enough to believe it.
At this point I would have liked to have learned exactly what the hell was going on – but no hints are given – everything is revealed at the very end, when you really don’t care what the hell is going on anymore...
To make things even more implausible, Cate Blanchett sends Elton John’s younger, gayer brother to track down Hanna & bring her back dead or alive. . . Elton John’s younger gayer brother as a hit man? How much B.S. do you expect us to buy?
This is Cate Blanchett’s career low point – in both films & her performance – she’s almost laughable using a Texan accent as she mercilessly hunts down a small blonde waif. Even when the secret is revealed, you think – If Erik cared about Hanna, why didn’t he simply take her to a remote city in a small corner of the world & bring her up to be a normal child instead of training her to be a ruthless killer? HE determined her destiny would be filled with violence, not the military. So there’s no good guy here, they’re all bad & there’s no sympathy for the little killing machine either – I mean, do YOU want to adopt her?
This film is as bad as ‘Black Swan’, except that there is an explanation at the end...
but who cares?

(*) I used Pet Shop Boys because I never listened to 80's techno pop so if it's a bad reference, don't blame me, it's the only name I could think of from that time frame... I don't even know if The Pet Shop Boys were techo pop!