HANNA

year: 2011 cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Jessica Barden, Paris Arrowsmith rating: ***

The opening and closing sequences, mirroring each other in content and closure, envelope this unique action/suspense in such a clever fashion you’ll forget the flaws.

Our taut story centers on a teenage girl, Hanna, raised in the snowy Finland wilderness, displaying cunning agile as she hunts deer and learns from her mentor/father played by Eric Bana, making the most of a small (but important) amount of screen time.

But soon enough, wary of her claustrophobic, contained anonymity, Hanna decides to venture into civilization, warned she’d be hunted by federal agents – one in particular played by Cate Blanchett, as coolly calculating as the titular protagonist sans the chaste sympathy of youth.

Hanna’s adventure is tight and suspenseful as she, after a seemingly easy yet downright bloody escape – dad trained her to get out of any situation – travels across Europe with deadly agents on her tail. The metronomic techno soundtrack not only works as a hypnotic score but seems a robotic muse keeping the daring phenom alive and kicking to the next venture.

Along the way she meets… and surreptitiously joins up with… a family consisting of father, mother, son, and teenage daughter (smitten with Hanna's rogue naivete), and the film hits a wall – that Hanna smashes through once the agents tail her again.

Blanchett displays the right amount of detached evil to counter our heroine's equally determined quest to survive, and more importantly, the persistence to discover her true origins which, once disclosed, makes things clearer for an audience that, having suspended disbelief this long, are willing to accept just about anything.

Saoirse Ronan (THE LOVELY BONES) is great in the lead role: with narrowed eyes and the right amount of tomboyish beauty, she's a sublime mix of naïve innocence and lethal cunning. Not a perfect film, but it should keep you interested.

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