PG-13, 1 hr. 51 min. Directed by: Joe Wright. Release Date: April 8, 2011.
I’m going to start with another PSA about talking throughout an entire movie. There are obviously people who think it’s okay, and I’ve got to say that I’ve never been involved in a mid-movie discussion that was more interesting than what was going on in the movie. Well, maybe Borat, but that’s about the limit. Not for the first time since I’ve moved to Ohio, I’ve noticed the tendency for people to chatter their way through a movie. To be fair, it’s happened in other places, but not to the extent that it’s happened in my experience of Ohio theaters. Inevitably, it’s some redneck pontificating about the film, good or ill (in this case he was predicting the obvious or commenting on how “smokin’ hot” Cate Blanchett was). Even worse is when it’s some redneck kid too rude and inconsiderate to worry about their chronic texting. In my thirty years on this Earth, I’ve only been in ONE movie where an incoming phone call needed to be answered. I left the theater as I took the call, and life or death was literally involved. It wasn’t the “life or death” of Suzie kissing Cory and I at least left the theater to get the news I was waiting on. My final thought for this rant is SHUT UP! Once the movie starts, keep your talking to a minimum (like 30 seconds throughout the movie), keep your voice down, and if you absolutely can’t be without your cell phone for two hours (which either makes you the leader of your country/company, expecting bad news about a loved one, for which I would be genuinely sorry to hear, or remarkably lame), pick yourself up and leave the theater to answer it or text back. Thanks for playing!
When I reviewed The Lovely Bones last year… or maybe the year before, I’m pretty sure I had lots of praise for Saorise Ronan. It’s not her fault that her parents foolishly gave her a name that no one in their right mind can spell or pronounce. Hanna has convinced me that Ms. Ronan is someone to watch. I hope to see a long career for her that’s filled with great movies. With any luck, her career won’t parallel Ellen Page’s career: a few great movies initially, interspersed with increasingly crappy movies in increasingly long periods. Ronan wasn’t alone for good performances. I liked Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana, too, which isn’t unusual. In fact, I didn’t see one I didn’t like, except for the guy running Wilhelm Grimm’s house in Berlin. He was a bit too kooky for me. That part is unusual, I’m generally pretty equally divided on the “loved-them, hated-them” scale.
I dug the way this story unfolded, and I’m still not entirely sure that I believe everything we’re told about Hanna’s origin. I like that the more information we get about Hanna, the more understandable the circumstances in the beginning of the film are. Based on the early trailers I saw for this movie about six months ago, I was afraid that this was going to end up being some sort of Bond meets Bella nonsense, something aimed at tween girls to give them a message of empowerment. In reality, what I got from this was more a “Buffy if she’d been a spy” vibe, and the movie had little other than the PG-13 rating to bring in the tweens. In my theater group, I was the youngest person by maybe 20 years.
Hanna has all the sophistication of a Bond or Bourne film: exotic locales, random murder sprees, slick escapes and interesting characters. It’s hip to an extent, but I feel like there’s substance buried here, too. There are lessons and an actual point, which seems to be a rarity of the genre. Depth is provided as we watch Hanna, who grew up in isolation with her father, become more aware of the world we take for granted. We watch as she experiences electricity, music, television for the first time. We get to see how her trained reflexes respond to the first boy who tries to steal a kiss (and the resulting injuries were pretty funny, at least I thought so). We got to see how she reacted to the feel of summer sun on her face and the wind in her hair as she drives down a country lane. It made me think about the simple pleasures in my own life I take for granted.
