Has it been a terribly bad January and February for movies? Or just a normally bad January and February for movies? I've felt cinematically beat up for two months straight, and then wham, I see Source Code, Your Highness, and Hanna all in a row. Maybe none of these are going to go down in history as the greatest flicks of all time, but two months ago we were justifying going to see No Strings Attached, using excuses like, "Well, it's not nothing," and "I already hate life, so how much worse can it get?"
Because of this lack of discrimination on our parts over the last few months, there has been some debate as to whether Hanna is truly great or just better than the bullshit we've been stabbing into our eyeholes for the last three months. It takes time to discern these things, and movies like Hanna are often argued about decades after their release. I'm leaning toward the "really great" end of things, however. The haters seem to be bringing up Hanna's derivative, simple plot as a deficit. That's really missing the point. Hanna is a supremely stylistic exercise, and all plot concerns are secondary at best.
I'm not going to spend much time bothering with the obligatory plot summary, because plot hardly matters when discussing why Hanna is so good. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is raised to be a deadly assassin, has trouble fitting in with girls her age, must kill CIA bitch (Cate Blanchett) who killed her mom. Not much to it. Actually, come to think of it, it, I wonder if Tarantino is reconsidering his plans to eventually make Kill Bill 3, with Vivica A. Fox's kid hunting down The Bride for revenge. It's strikingly similar.
The reason that plot doesn't really matter is that once Hanna sets out on her quest for vengeance, the movie progresses as a series of trance-inducing set pieces. If you threw Paul Greengrass shakey-cam, late-MTV era electro videos, and the hyper-kenetic vibe of Run Lola Run in a blender, you'd be in the ballpark. Style over substance isn't the half of it; Hanna is style in lieu of substance. I mean that as a good thing. Director Joe Wright has such a "take it or leave it" attitude about what he's asking you to swallow, I can't help but be charmed by his bravado.
The Chemical Brothers score has already been greatly lauded and greatly derided. While I don't see myself listening to it much outside of the movie, it fits Hanna like a glove. Who better to score a mid-90s music video fever dream than the Chemical Brothers? Between the pulsation of the music and the rhythmic choreography of the visuals, I found myself going into a daze several times during Hanna. Far too few movies attempt to become a unique phenomenological experience, and even fewer succeed. In my book, that alone makes Hanna worth your time and money.
Certain genres have become so abstracted from reality as to become self-contained uniquely cinematic experiences. The classic Hollywood music, for example. Do the mediocre plots of Gold Diggers of 1933, An American in Paris, or Meet Me in St. Louis make them any less great? Or how about the slasher? Countless retreads through first person POV, the iconic killer, and expendable teens with loose morals do nothing to diminish the greatness of Black Christmas and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not only have these genres become abstracted from reality, but they rely on our immediate familiarity with the scenerios presented. Great filmmakers in these genres are concerned with stylistic embellishment, not profound plot. With Hanna, Joe Wright has made a great Action movie with a capital A, plot be damned, swagger be everything.
-Ben
p.s. Saoirse Ronan deserves a whole other article about how great she is as Hanna, Erica Bana and Cate Blanchet are also phenomenal, the hippie family requires further thought and discussion, and the question of whether Hanna is appropriate for children is up for hot debate, but you didn't need me to tell you that.