HANNA
3 out of 5 stars

this was like the bourne identity for teens. well, except for the whole amnesia bit, hanna is just like jason bourne. she’s designed to kill, doesn’t have any parents (well, one), and has a mean govt lady chasing after her... (cate blanchett is meaner than joan allen, methinks!)

so, hanna is basically about a 16 year old girl (saoirse ronan from atonement), who lives with her “father” erik (eric bana) in the middle of nowhere. she lives deep in the wintery woods of finland, knows how to hunt well, has great strength/fighting skills, and is also cut off from all known technology...even electricity. she’s forced to memorize a fake back story stating that she’s from leipzig, germany, and her father soon abandons her because there’s a switch which tells the CIA the coordinates of their location, thus letting marissa weigler (cate blanchett as a southern redhead) know where they are. turns out marissa killed hanna’s mother when she was just a baby, and erik saved her from the same fate, and you learn why hanna is so strong, so fearless, and so different from your average 16 year old girl. sure, genetic engineering makes up who you are on the physical level, but you wonder if someone is isolated and trained to be an assassin, won’t they grow up to be just that? ahh, the question of nature vs. nuture is what this one is all about... ;)

saoirse ronan sure has grown up from her days as the little girl from atonement, and she sure knows how to kick ass when necessary! she looks young and vulnerable, but she can break necks and escape out of a CIA detention facility as if it was some amusement park... cate blanchett sure knows how to play a great villain, but i felt like this story could have used some more finesse. there are a lot of loose-ends that could have tied together better such as why the program was shut down and what was the true purpose of the program. maybe even more flashbacks of erik and marissa too? joe wright (the director of atonement) does a pretty good job with the action/thriller genre, but i expected better... when a director who can tell a good story well is at the helm, should we expect that? maybe we’ll just stick with the bourne identity movies next time... :/