Now Playing: Hanna

Today I managed to convince my friends to go see Hanna. I was actually surprised that it took so much work to get them to go see it, as I've always thought it looked great. I'm a little afraid I'm getting snobby about movies. Puneet has said as much for a while, refusing to give me movies thinking I'll hate the movies he likes, and when he would only give me old movies for the Force Fed Films. Oh well, I'll like the movies I like, and to Hell with the rest of them! Hit the jump to see which type of film I think Hanna is.


Hanna is about a young girl named Hanna who has been trained from a very young age to be a perfect assassin. Incredible knowledge, physical training and survival skills. She's lived in the forest all her life with her father Erik. Now that she's strong and quick enough even to beat him in a physical fight, she is ready to leave the safety of the woods, and carry out her mission.

Hanna is all business

Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan and I thought she acted really really well. I wonder if she'll get some kind of nomination for it. Normally kids or young actors aren't believable, but I was completely able to get into her character. Her father Erik is played by Eric Bana and while he's not in the film that much, I also thought he did a good job. The rest of the cast is really pretty odd and strange, but they all seem to fit in the world well.

Something that surprised me about this movie was how much it seemed to be about music. A big part of Hanna's character is that she's curious what music even IS, as she's never heard it growing up. Multiple times throughout the movie feature scenes about different kinds of music and song that she encounters once out in the real world. There's even a creepy weird bad guy that always whistles the same tune over and over, adding yet another musical element to the story. Then you get the music of the movie, the score and such that Hanna isn't hearing which I found I really liked. In particular, I liked the music used in the action scenes, which are really pretty good, even if there's not too many.

Hanna gets herself into some trouble

To be honest, I kinda got a "Peter and the Wolf" vibe from this movie. Mostly it was from that one bad guy who would always eerily whistle his one tune, but there's also a strong presence of Grimm's Fairy-tales throughout the movie too as it's one of the few books Hanna had as a kid growing up. That could have just been me, but it seemed to add an extra layer to the film for me.

Lastly I want to bring up the cinematography. It was really quite beautiful and stunning most of the time. I found it even made the scenes that otherwise didn't have much going on, really nice to look at and interesting in their own way. The early scenes of the movie when Hanna and Erik are still in the forest are probably some of the best and most memorable, but the movie is beautiful throughout.

I'm really glad I saw this movie. I had a really good time and enjoyed the music and the look of the filming. I found Hanna's character intriguing and her skills, especially her intelligence fascinating. Now I said at the start that I thought I was getting too critical of movies. I'm not sure if that's true, but I do know that while I really liked the movie for the reasons I listed, 2 of the 3 friends that came with me said at the end that they had found it really boring. It's true there wasn't much action, but what there was I thought was done really really well and looked very convincing and hard hitting. Of course the final decision whether or not you're going to see this is yours, but personally I would recommend this movie. I'd say if you liked Winter's Bone, you'll probably like this.


NOTE: I've noticed a lot of people coming here trying to find out what the tune the bad guy is whistling. I believe it's the "off to work we go" tune from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Creepy! Also, that bit of tune is used in "The Devil is in the Details" by Chemical Brothers.