THRILLER; 1hr 51min
STARRING: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett
Family planning: Bana and Ronan
Hanna (Ronan) and her father, Erik (Bana), live a fairy-tale existence in a log cabin in snowbound Finland, hunting in the skins of the animals they catch and eat. Know, though, that fairy-tales are as much about darkness as light: at 16, Hanna has been trained as an assassin by ex-CIA agent Erik, her angelic little face no indication of what she can become. Which is just as well since her purpose in the alien outside world is to hunt down a woman as deadly as she (Blanchett).
Hanna’s journey takes her to Morocco, where she hooks up with a dotty English family (Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng and Jessica Barden) while being pursued by a stone-cold nightclub owner with terrible taste in outfits (Tom Hollander, somehow pulling all that off). In a striking, unguessable cocktail of mystery and suspense, director Joe Wright — who worked with Ronan on Atonement and knows how to play to her otherworldly strengths — keeps Hanna and Erik on propulsive parallel paths where journey and destination are two equal parts of an unnerving puzzle.
