Hanna
Director: Joe Wright
Year: 2011
Rating: 7.0
This is a pretty good promotional film for home
schooling. I have always thought that was a bad idea but the father here does
a fine job of teaching his daughter Hanna languages, reading comprehension,
science, cooking, math and self-reliance. A little weak in the artistic fields
like music or art appreciation but she is still sweet sixteen so plenty of
time. And as in every home schooling curriculum he teaches her to be a near
perfect killing machine. All of our kids should be so lucky though most of
them would probably not enjoy being raised near the artic pole without TV,
McDonalds, human contact or a father who attacks you constantly like Cato
in the Pink Panther films.
This is a crazy plot that some 16-year old girl probably came up with after
being made fun of by the mean girls at school. It is ludicrous on so many
levels yet is rather a good fun. Her father has spent all these years teaching
her how to kill to get revenge on a C.I.A. agent and now she is set free to
do just that in a ridiculously overly complicated plan. The main problem with
the film for action junkies is that it begins with a rush and then for a
long stretch not much happens - I was so looking forward to a really high
body count of bad guys - which may sound ghoulish but when you present the
audience with a 16-year old blond girl who can kill with pretty much anything,
it leads you to expect so much more.
The actress Saoirse Ronan was about 16 at the time of the filming and has
gone on to a very good career so far with Brooklyn, Lady Bird and Mary Queen
of Scots. She is great in this film with her stone face slowly melting due
to contact with the outside world and it is certainly a physically demanding
role. What strikes me as weird besides a 16 year old female killer is that
this has been made into a TV series that just got underway. That could be
interesting. Or really stupid. I have been enjoying the TV series that is
based on this film.
