Hanna 2011

     A sixteen-year-old girl Hanna has been raised by her father Erik Heller an ex-C.I.A. operative.  They have been living in the wilds of Finland.  She has learned how to be the perfect assassin and she is dispatched on a mission across Europe.  She is being tracked by Marissa Wiegler, a ruthless female intelligence agent and her operatives.  As Hanna nears her ultimate target, she begins to have revelations about her existence and her humanity?

  
     This action thriller has bloody and violent scenes and pushes the limits of a PG-13 rating!!  The violence is very realistic but many of the action scenes are shot in a stylized and rapidly edited manner.  The different weapons used are arrows, knives, guns, fists and everyday objects.  There is a high body count, bloody deaths, torture and implied deaths of bystanders.  The messages of this film are fairly negative and it suggests that a person with killer instincts must give into them?  Despite the downers in this film, Hanna is a person with dual personalities.  She is a deadly killer and sweet heroine in one package!!  5* (I really liked this movie)

  
111 min, Action directed by Joe Wright and written by Seth Lochhead and David Farr with Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Vicky Krieps, Cate Blanchett, Paris Arrowsmith, John Macmillan, Tim Beckmann, Paul Birchard, Christian Malcolm, Jamie Beamish, Tom Hodgkins, Nathan Nolan.


Note:  Imdb 6.8 out of 10 with185,104 views, Rotes Tomatoes 71% with 227 critics 66% audience score with 72,443 user ratings, The Guardian 2* out of 4* Peter Bradshaw, Roger Ebert 3* out of 4*, Common Sense Media age 15+, 0* positive messages, 0* role models, 4* violence, 2* sex, 3* language, 1*consumerism, 1* drinking, drugs & smoking, Amazon 4.3* out of 5* with 2,689 reviews, Metacritic 65 out of 100 with 40 critics (26 positive 12 mixed 2 negative) 7.7 out of 10 with 436 ratings (324 positive 81 mixed 31 negative), Letterboxd 3.4* out of 5*.


Special Note:  Saoirse Ronana performed many of her own stunts.  Her eyebrows were bleached to try and mimic the physicality similar to a white wolf.  Ronan had four hour days of intense training for over two months from Dan Inosanto, a Bruce Lee protege.  A former CIA agent was brought in to consult on the character of Marissa Wiegler.  The large oval shaped tunnel where Hanna escapes is a wind tunnel for testing full sized aircraft.  Seth Lochhead wrote the original story and script on spec in 2006.  He returned for production work in 2010.