HannaHanna is a movie from 2011 which is about a girl who is genetically engineered to be the perfect soldier.

Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan, is introduced to us as she is living a snowy forest alone with her father.  We see her hunting reindeer as well as fending off surprise attacks from her father  (it’s not as suss as it sounds!).  She is being trained and educated to be a highly efficient fighter with great knowledge of various languages and other information.  We quickly learn that her father is a highly skilled special agent who in fact stole/rescued Hanna and her mother when the program to breed genetically perfect soldiers is shut down back in 1994.

Beleiving they are both ready, Hanna’s father Erik (played by Eric Bana) formulates a plan for them to re enter the world by having Hanna caught, so she can kill Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), a powerful woman after both of them.  Whilst Erik manages to make his way to Berlin, where to the two will meet.

Everything goes to plan and Hanna is caught, asking to speak to Marissa. Marissa agrees but sends s a double in who is then killed.  Hanna then escapes and starts to travel towards Berlin.  Along the way she makes some friends and starts to experience many things for the first time like electricity and music, not to mention contact with other humans besides her father.

But it’s not long before they’re both being chased and the two must do their best to survive using their intelligence and of course, martial arts skills.

Hanna gets ready to kick ass

Hanna Experiencing the World for the First Time.

Perhaps the most interesting, and unfortunately entertaining part of this movie is Hanna entering the world and experiencing it with her senses for the first time.

Having never heard music and growing up in the snow, she sees a dry desert and other people for the first time in her life, and of course, eventually hears music.  This is most obvious though when she finds a room to stay in for free, with the ceiling fan, television, shower and other various modern pieces of equipment doing their thing around her, her senses get almost swamped and she nearly loses it.

After that though it seems to be the social interactions that plague her, as she tackles  a boy to the ground instead of kissing him, and has a few other awkward moments.

The whole pace of the story to me seems to revolve more around that, and the chase and danger. Although the danger does not seem far, it doesn’t seem to rate. The movie crawls a long at a pretty slow pace and offers only marginally watchable events that are mildly entertaining.  It’s not a terrible movie, but I would go as far to say that it was ‘good’.

Eric Bana shows us some mediocre moves

The Martial Arts and Action

There isn’t a lot of good action in this film either, perhaps the best part is the beginning of the film when Hanna and her father train and we get some insight into their lifestyle and skills.

The rest of the movie offers not much at all.  With a few quick fight scenes with reasonable fighting movements from Hanna, it gets old very quick.  Unfortunately I was very disappointed with Eric Bana’s fights (who I’m a fan of as an actor – being a fellow Aussie), which may not necessarily be his performance as much as the original choreography and final editing.  His movements lack conviction, they’re slow and he just seems unbalanced the whole time.  It’s all a bit clumsy and seems like not enough attention was paid to the choreography.

Overall?

Just scrapes in below watchable.  I was so tempted to pull out the iPad and check Facebook while watching this film (which I didn’t – it was hard) because I was so bored and over it.  You may disagree so I leave that choice up to you.

On Blu Ray –

Region A (US & Canada)
Hanna (Blu-ray + Digital Copy)

Region B (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe etc)
Hanna (Blu-ray + DVD)

On DVD –

Region 1 (US & Canada)
Hanna

Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Hanna [DVD]

Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Hanna

More info on Movie Regions here.

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