Hanna too complex, ambitious, stale

By Aaren Pastor     4/7/11 7:00pm

Hanna is no fairy tale. Though director Joe Wright's (Atonement) film attempts to capture the supernatural world of the Brothers Grimm, the threads of this film unravel faster than Rapunzel's hair due to its implausible plot line. The story, about a genetically engineered supersoldier child on a search for freedom and identity in a harrowing world of evil government cover-ups and lederhosen-clad Germans, reads as a poor entanglement of The Bourne Identity with an adolescent girl and The Boys from Brazil. Channeling Bourne with its action sequences (there is even a one-on-one with a pen, in case you had not quite gotten the hint yet), search for identity, superassassins, rogue agents, corrupt government agencies and an obsession with cameras and the watching eyes of Big Brother, the film moves at a schizophrenic pace.

For those well-versed in film lore, the plot line of genetically engineered Aryan superchildren is ripped right from Franklin J. Schaffner's 1978 masterpiece The Boys from Brazil, starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier as the horrific Dr. Mengele and aging Nazi-hunter Ezra Lieberman, respectively. The film details Lieberman's quest to destroy the children-clones of Hitler scattered across the world to prevent the rise of the Fourth Reich. Hanna is a genetically modified child, brought into fruition due to a combination of government intelligence and research agencies in post-Cold War Germany. She lacks compassion, pity and other "weaknesses," instead harboring superior strength, speed, and stamina that allows her to fulfill her role as a genetically superior, brilliantly blond and blue-eyed girl child. Her maxim: "Adapt or die."

Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), makes for an intriguing character study. Isolated all her life from the madness and noise of the contemporary world, with access only to a worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Her utter loss in dealing with the inundations of technology provides a poignant insight into loss of innocence. When foiled with Jessica Barden's (Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution) Sophie, Hanna is a somewhat whimsical figure of naïveté; Wright's comment on the self-absorption and utter absurdity of today's youth is reflected in the ‘pure' Hanna. Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), one of today's most masterful actors, perfectly stereotypes the brassy, hardened American career woman, down to the slightly overly-made up face and functional heels in her character, Marissa Wiegler. Wiegler is a handler, responsible for Eric Bana's (The Time Traveler's Wife) character Erik Heller when he, the rogue-but-ultimately-in-the-right-agent pops up on the grid after a 14-year absence, with his ‘daughter' slaying operatives left and right. Wiegler herself has some mommy issues, having killed Hanna's mother and sacrificed her own maternal rights for a career with "the Agency." Bana's character is essentially left undeveloped, except for some choice shots of his nicely sculpted abdomen.

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The accents of all three lead actors are spot-on, and the film sequencing is jarring, explosive and visually stunning. Similarly impressive are the implications for the dark world of uncontrolled governmental agency and the extraordinary license given to so-called protection and intelligence institutions. Additionally, electronica artist The Chemical Brothers provides a throbbing techno-club soundtrack that serves to underscore the latent industrial punk motif of the film's setting.

Ultimately, the plot lines are too numerous, causing the entire project to fall a little short of its promising underpinnings. Eric Bana's death scene is haunting — two bodies spinning slowly on a decrepit merry-go-round in inner city Berlin smacks of Erich Maria Remarque's dying horses in a grotesque circle of death from All Quiet on the Western Front — but his character is again left woefully undeveloped. The near-lesbian tension Hanna shares with Sophie, Wiegler's past, the ring of assassins, project Gatinka: All are left dangling like so many loose threads. The final giant flashing text at the film's end hearkens back to Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) and reminds the viewer that this film, though slightly novel in approach, ultimately borrows too much and unpacks too little.

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