Since I don;t see a thread for it, here we go.
I saw Hanna last night at the midnight show. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s kind of like The Bourne Identity. I’d say it is very much worth seeing.
We went to see HANNA yesterday.
It was a good popcorn film - thin on plot (to say the least), but chock full of action, some great scenery, a couple of laugh-out-loud lines and one major kick-ass little girl.
I can almost hear the pitch given to the movie studio:
The Bad Seed on steroids!
Orphan Annie in the UFC!
Heidi on PCP!
I doubt there will be any Oscar nominations forthcoming, but if you liked SALT, imagine the Angelina Jolie character having a daughter who was home-schooled.
It is only a matter of time until part two comes out:
Hanna And Her Sisters - The Bloodbath
Oops!
I didn’t see this thread when I started mine (perhaps about the same time this was posted).
Mods - could you put mine into this thread so I don’t gunk up Cafe Society with multiple threads on same film?
Apologies.
Done.
I’ve seen two types of trailers. One that makes this look like La Femme Nikita and another that makes it look like The Bad Seed. Which is it more like?
Well, I see DMark went there already. Still, which is it more like?
Of the two, Le Femme Nikita. The Kid is the hero not the villain. I liked it. Good pace and showed parts of Africa and Europe you don’t see very often in film.
What do you think happens to her? What’s in her future?
We’ll have to wait for the sequel, since it so obviously left that open…
J.
I haven’t seen it, but I have to ask. Hanna vs. Hit-Girl - who would win?
The most entertaining part of this was seeing Hana reacting to the modern world, having been raised in isolation to be the perfect assassin - but knowing nothing practically about everyday stuff.
And yet though completely baffled by the amenities in a sleazy hotel (including flourescent lighting) she immediately knew and dealt with video cameras and figured out the internet with no help.
Heh, consistency isn’t its long shot 
- but I can see her dad “educating” her about the internet and about security camera systems (stuff she’d need to be an assassin after all), but not about everyday-life stuff - just taking that for granted.
Electric lighbtulbs and TV might actually be more important to her ability to get through the plan than the internet considering that part of the plan was for her to get from an unknown location anywhere in the world to Berlin. (And curious about those internet lessons since she and Bana disappeared into the wilderness before the Internet was really, truly a central part of life…would have liked to see her translating her Introduction to Mosaic book knowledge to doing historical and genetic research in an internet cafe
But yeah, she had Temperance Bones Disease, she was an expert in whatever it was required she be an expert in at the moment and a complete blank slate in whatever it would simply be amusing for her to not know.
Of course knowing everyday stuff would be more important - probably more important to blend in and know how to get around than being a dead shot or whatever - the irony implied is that the dad, who did not grow up isolated, may simply have taken that stuff for granted.
But sure, the movie cheats on its improbable premise. In reality, anyone that clueless would not last a day.
I still don’t understand why they even needed to alert the antagonist to their location?
I suppose I should spoiler this …
My take on it is that the dad wanted the kid to kill the antagonist. He isn’t really a “good guy” in all this … he’s using his alleged “daughter” as a weapon. He knew she’d want to question the daughter, and reasoned that in this way, she could get close enough to do the assassination. The antagonist was too careful though, and sent in a substitute, so his plan did not work.
I see the answer to that as:
[spoiler]They had three choices:
-
Stay in the wilderness forever. This isn’t necessarily a bad option but he knows she’s going to want to see the world someday. As he said at the end when answering “why now?”: Kids grow up.
-
Reintegrate back into society quietly. Might get away with it, but if they did trip an alarm somewhere they’d never know when the attack was coming and would have to live the rest of their lives in total paranoia.
-
Go on the offensive to allow reintegration. Attack on your own terms, eliminate the threat, then go on to a peaceful life.
Of course, I don’t see how the plan in #3 actually accomplished that. Presumably the CIA would be quite interested in figuring out who the girl was that killed one of their top agents and then successfully escaped a super secure facility.
- They just really didn’t approve of her grating accent.
[/spoiler]
This is the one that I thought would make the most sense. After all, we learn the antagonist(s) had no idea where they were and didn’t appear to even be actively searching for them. Granted, the protagonists may not have been totally aware of this, but 15 years or so of being undisturbed should have been a pretty good sign.
[spoiler] #3 is the possibility that makes the most sense at the outset … but, as the movie’s end, it seems that the “dad” had less honest motives. He claimed to love his “daughter”, and maybe he did grow to do so over time, but he was lying to her and manipulating her - it seems his real motive was revenge.
As you note, if he wanted to, he could have bent his energies to simply re-intigrating into anonymity. Rather, he set up an elaborate plan to have his “daughter” confront the antagonist face-to-face, to kill her (with a high likelihood of dying herself). This only makes sense if his real motive was the killing of the antagonist, not the saving of his “daughter”. [/spoiler]
I just saw this movie and I really enjoyed it. The director, Joe Wright had called the movie the anti-Sucker Punch during one of his interviews and having seen both, I agree. They both feature kick-ass heroines, but that’s about where the similarities end.
There were a lot of gorgeous shots in Hanna and I really enjoyed the texture and color contrast from scene to scene. It’s a modern day fairy tale and it follows the fairy tale story arc and character archetypes rather faithfully without sacrificing pacing or nuance. That is probably due to the nice balance that the director struck between action and character and the great acting done by all three of the main characters.
One thing that was left rather vague…
I do hope that the English family didn’t get killed, I rather liked them. It seems that everyone else who met Hanna died a rather horrible death.