User reviews

It's very sad when a great story turn out bad because of unskilled directing. The story had all the major ingredients to create a world wide box office hit, if it was made different and with a greater understanding what a makes a good movie.

The first part filmed in the frozen arctic, filmed in Finland gave me a feeling of, whoa this is a great movie, but that feeling left me very fast.

After that the story and filming reminded me of some B- action movie that was made very fast and on an almost amateur level. Even the filming skills and the cinematographic level was after 20 minutes like someone with very limited financial opportunities made the film and therefore had to hurry up and do whatever possible just to finish the film.

There are a lot of scenes in the film which are pure contradictions.

1. Why should Hanna hit that tracking signal switch. If she was ready to rock roll, why just not leave that frozen place together with Eric Banas character 2. If Hanna was ready to start her "hit man" career, why did Banas character leave and left her behind all by herself. Why was it a problem to leave together. 3. Why raise someone without any connection to modern life if you wanna become a hit man in the modern world? If would probably buy that explanation if they had Internet there and she learned a lot of stuff online, for example what light is ( which she later on finds amazing)

4. She had no problems to with Alien like capability kill a lot of people in the cottage and in the CIA facility ( or who they were). And very precise did she know every part of the underground facility which probably the authorized staff don't know. 5 The whole great facility was in a desert in Morocco, which is very stupid. The story would be more cool if it was somewhere in Spain or in some woods in Europe. This just doesn't make sense.

6. She has kicked a lot of undercover guys and then she hardly can't beat a guy that looks like a hooligan. And this almost super human kind of girl, runs like a ordinary girl, with no visible signs of someone with enhanced muscles and DNA.

7. She has never seen light, couldn't turn of the TV i Morocco and all the suddenly within matter of minutes in Berlin she becomes a computer wizard and finds all information about DNA on internet with minutes. I just don't buy that. That doesn't give a serious approach to this story. A girl almost afraid of modern technique, has no problem with computers after she's been raised in a wood without any connection with computers.

I could continue to write 2 whole pages, but it is of no use. The girl who played Hanna did a good job, but could probably do a lot better with the right director. I honestly don't now why Cate Blanchett, one of the best in the modern cinematography decided to take part in this movie? The same goes for Eric Bana, what was he thinking?

This could have been a great movie, with another director and more logical story. This film can't in any way be compared to Colombiana, which is one of the best films in the last 10 years.

I cannot believe the fawning reviews for this movie on here, it is poorly acted pretentious garbage. The story as you must know by now is of a girl raised in the wilds of Finland by her ex CIA father who teaches her how to fight, shoot, speak different languages etc, a teen assassin,you get the picture. All well and good, but apart from Saoirse Ronan the acting is very poor Blanchett is extremely bad, very camp and unbelievable, Bana is poor too, he's very unconvincing, at times looking like he does not want to be there, both badly cast, the hippy trippy English couple and their kids that pop up mid movie are also poorly acted, annoying and really just unnecessary fluff. Saoirse Ronan does a decent acting job, but in the fight scenes (thankfully there aren't many) she's just not convincing at all, the "blows" she delivers look far too weak to induce the impact shown on screen, indeed you can see with some of the blows her arms just bounce off the perpetrators, decent idea badly executed. The only way is to judge for yourself, but I would not recommend it!

This movie is not worth the money at all and i'm 100% sure that the reason so many people gave this a high rating is because they are in with whoever created this god awful film. Seriously totally useless movie. There is one slightly redeeming factor and that is that some of the songs are pretty catchy. However, the chemical brothers really didn't give this movie enough tracks. The only reason this movie gets a 3 is that there were a couple of OK action sequences, the music was good, and there was one maybe two good lines.

I hope you guys don't waste your time or money on this movie but if you do just remember i told you.

Worst movie of the year , worst plot of the year , worst acting of the year, worst director of the year , worst music of the year i still have headache , everything worst of the year , i must write ten worst lines of the year for IMDb , worst action of the year , worst clichés of the year , i really cant understand why people keep writing good reviews about this crap , save your self's and stay away from this real bullshit.There's really nothing to comment the whole thing is a cover up a childish movie transformed to an secret agent bullshit,The truth is there's no secret agents on this stupid movie don't get fooled from company people that get payed and writing good stuff about movie craps like this . GENERAL CONCLUSION: STAY AWAY FROM THIS CRAP 3/10

Save yourself the time and aggravation. This is a terrible movie, totally ridiculous on almost every level and at times feels more like a comedy "thriller" due to the absolute suspension of disbelief in scene after scene. The characters are all caricatures of real people, and nothing in this movie is close to believable.

I don't know why Blanchett or Bana would have agreed to it, other than it probably read better as a script before all these clown actors ruined it.

Meh. I gave it three out of ten stars. It is a Bourne Identity rip-off with considerably less character development. Saoirse Ronan's performance, however, is extraordinary. Otherwise I'd have given it one star.

In Bourne Identity, we get a really steamy romance, riddled with tension and conflict over self-preservation versus love. In Hanna, we get a similar best-friend-teen-girl-crush to replace it, but it's not taken far enough to create a pivot point in the plot, or to wrench our hearts.

Cate's motivation, as the bad guy, is never clearly established. In fact, the plot would be more believable if she were the good guy! Saorise's character is powerful, believable, and endearing - in a fierce, feminist kind of way. Terry Gilliam should pick up this character and run with it! If you're debating whether to go to the theater or stream Netflix, may I suggest that you stay home and watch Tideland.

If you just need to get out with the spouse and kids, go ahead and see it.

Hanna is awful. Not in the usual Hollywierd, "lets puke out an hour and a half of dung and make some money" kind of way...but in the much more horrid category..."we think we made a smart, well written, well directed meaningful film..with a sterling cast..look how great our film is!".......make no mistake---This is one of the best reviewed-Worst films I ever-almost-walked out of. The main problem is the story...we are suppose to have sympathy for the main character of "Hanna"..we don't..almost from the very beginning..whats more she is god-awful annoying with her little Russian girl accent doing away with various "really bad" CIA agents--mostly American--draw your own politically incorrect conclusions about that heap of dung...Sadirse Ronan is all wrong for the role..she fails to get us on her side with her character the way she has done in past roles..most recently-with a stunning performance in the brilliant-lesser seen "The Way Back". But truth is-it is the asinine story that is the main culprit here..the flashy direction just adds to the agony..putting lipstick on a pig is about the only way to sum up this fart-fest as far as the direction--or lack of it--goes . One of the few films in my life I ever =almost-walked out of..the poorly reviewed "Your Highness" was playing in the theater right next to the restroom-for which I took many breaks- to see if I could just puke out my disenchantment with this turkey--I wish I would have just switched to "Your Highness"....bad?maybe...but not as bad as this-and thats really BAAAD!! and at least it has Natalie Portman..an actress for which Sandirse will never..ever..be half as good as.

Somewhere hidden in the Arctic circle live Erik (Eric Bana) and Hanna (Saoirse Ronan). Erik is an ex-special operative, who resigned from service shortly after the Cold War, taking with him a infant Hanna to whom he gifted his life, career and love. Schooling her in the arts of espionage and assassination she is trained from a child to be a ruthless killing machine, but not one devoid of love and emotion. However children grow up and Hanna is increasingly curious of the outside world. She is told by Erik that the only way to freedom is through the killing of Marissa (Cate Blanchett), a CIA agent with a dark and unclear past.

I took the chance on this movie after seeing the high ratings on IMDb, hence I can't help but question the appeal of this movie. In an attempt of copying the success of Nikita it surges forward impressively in the same direction during the initial act of the movie. Through the cold winter of Syberia to the rocky desert of Morocco Hanna shows off her metal and training to escape the 'bad guys'. There she stumbles upon an English family, who inadvertently take her in and start teaching her how to be more or less normal (given how wacky the family itself is). From here on in the logic and construct of the movies opening go into tailspin. The character of Hanna undergoes drastic character changes, which are in no way warranted. From a ruthless killer singlehandedly disposing of trained platoons of soldiers she turns into the protagonist in "Run, Lola, Run", who struggles to cope with a couple of skinhead dimwits. But she is not the only character with troubled character building, as neither Erik nor Hanna nor any of the supporting cast really seem to be too friendly with logic. And if that happens than the story itself ends up being an unequivocal mess.

Simultaneously the drama and flow of the movie take a hit, when we go into sleeper mode, as Joe Wright attempts to do some character building, only to fail with a big fat letter 'F'. The somewhat layered character of Hanna feels like she is being dragged down, flattened and exposed. Unfortunately summing the flaws up it fails in delivering a manageable plot/story or some well-worked drama to make it memorable (as "Nikita" or "Leon"). By the final act the suspense and thrill factor fizzles out completely, which left me waiting patiently for end credits. Finally given this is in the end nothing more than an action flick it fails to uphold the enthralling action of the opening sequences and ends with a veritable anticlimax.

The cinematography remains top-notch throughout and the use of music during action sequences is praiseworthy. So basically tech credits are exceptional. But really how many films can you watch simply because they were well filmed and edited?

An improbable scenario to begin with, it becomes even more far fetched and inane as it progresses. Too much suspension of disbelief is required to account for Hanna's uneven superpowers. She effortlessly outwits armies, adapting to the most varied conditions across continents without prior experience, yet struggles to outpace the cut-price duo sent to track her. There seems little point beyond the actual process of traversing continents. At times it resembles a folksy travel programme, with amiable hippies and Gypsy serenaders, then we're back in a ninja assassin game with shady punks and aimless pursuits. What's it all about? Who cares. The whole thing is risible.

This movie is a masterpiece in the same sense that Steven Seagal's movies are.

I couldn't help thinking throughout the movie that Saoirse Ronan would probably grow up to occupy the same slot that Seagal's occupied, albeit in the opposite gender.

The storyline is simplicity itself, in the worst tradition of American cinema, namely, one could guess accurately within the first ten minutes how the plot will unfold and what the climax would be.

If you enjoy pure action without any cerebral activity, and almost no humour to talk about, you may enjoy this movie; otherwise, spend the one and three quarters of your life on something better.

I've seen a couple of Joe Wright's past films as director, PRIDE & PREJUDICE and ATONEMENT, and I liked both of them; particularly the latter, which told a traditional wartime romance story in a fresh and invigorating way. Therefore I looked forward to seeing what Wright would do with an equally traditional assassin-based action/thriller, his first foray into the genre.

Unfortunately, this is a Wright cock-up and the director makes a real pig's ear of the material. HANNA is a glacial and uninteresting story about a young teenage girl, who's a top killer assassin for no good reason, and like Steven Soderbergh's HAYWIRE it fails to connect with any of the characters in any way, leaving them a one-dimensional tableau for the viewer to watch but never interact with.

Where to go with what's wrong here? Saoirse Ronan, for a start, who is singularly unconvincing as a supposed top assassin; I didn't buy it for a second, and no amount of camera trickery will make me believe otherwise. It doesn't help that there's no real story to speak of, just characters moving from one place to the next in search of substance. The movie is also saddled with the terrible Cate Blanchett, as awkward here as the villain as she was in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

Story doesn't matter so much in action films, so long as the action delivers. Needless to say that it doesn't here. Wright is forced to edit around his youthful star to disguise her inability in a manner familiar from many recent Steven Seagal movies. Lapses in logic and some frankly ridiculous interludes don't help either. Eric Bana, playing Ronan's father, is nothing more than boring, as though he's lost the spark he once had in the likes of CHOPPER and TROY. The much-lauded one-take scene is disappointing when put against that of ATONEMENT. Sad to say but this is the type of film I try to put out of my mind as quickly as possible once I've seen it because it really is that bad.

I don't know what I was thinking when I picked this... thing. Hanna is one of the most ridiculous films I've seen in a while. It's female Mowgli meets Jason Bourne meets Alice in Wonderland. It's just utter nonsense. It's action, thriller with comedy and drama. It's a two hour mish-mash of absurdity, silly characters, and a few cheesy action scenes. This may sound like fun on paper, but it's anything but. Maybe there is some symbolism there, I have no idea. What I do know is that I had to take several 15 minute breaks from watching, because it was just so damn boring. If you want to see a young girl kicking ass, I suggest Chocolate (2008) with Jejaa Yanin.

I really like Cate Blanchett, she is beautiful and her acting skills are terrific. Even Eric Bana is a good actor, although his talent is wasted in a handful of mediocre movies. And you know that their careers are are sliding down when they wind up in this idiotic movie.

Any movie ought to have a purpose, I could say it is none but then I think the purpose was to indulge someone's (the writers?) fantasy of a frail teenage girl suddenly becoming a killing machine, all of this shown in a mindless action video clip. It is just pointless, ludicrous and simply boring. It reminded me of a very bad episode of any of JJ Abram's series.

I don't know if saw too many action movies in my life, that some clichés are becoming extremely annoying to me. The first one is the evil CIA cliché, in which the same agency that could not avert the 9/11 attacks has created with genetic engineering, way before the genome mapping was completed, a perfect soldier.

Then there is Blanchett's character, the evil and cold agent that is supposed to be the villain. Well, seeing that Hanna has a borderline, psychotic and anti-social personality, one can wonder who is actually the villain.

One that made me laugh is the scene in which a girl that never used the internet is able to easily retrieve clippings from newspapers before the time the internet was widely accessible and that the search engine can precisely give her the link she is looking for.

The end of the movie spared us of any implausible twists, but after the foreseeable conclusion, one is left to think: "Is this all?".

So we don't know why the guy is off in the woods with his charge but there they are. And he's training her for something. Then she decides she's ready so off they go to do whatever it is. But for some reason they have to travel separately. And of course he didn't teach her anything about modes of transport, or money, or hotels or anything really except how to kill. It is implied this guy is highly skilled and the enemy is worried about him, but ah no, his performance is flatfooted. Just a whole bunch of poorly plotted maneuvering that leads to an totally unsatisfying movie.

I went into this movie with high hopes, but unfortunately I was let down. The premise is interesting, with the young girl being raised as a Jason Bourne type super soldier and all, but its just so boring and pretentious.

I think the very bland presentation is what did it for me. This could have been a great movie with more heart, or gone the other way and been a great exploitation flick a la Battle Royale. But as it stands, just dullsville. I did not care about Hanna, her father, the dumb family she meets and certainly not Claire Danes doing her best Jodie Foster impersonation.

One scene is good however. as other reviewers have pointed out, the scene in the cargo yard is great. Very high suspense, great camera-work, and a great gimmick of the camera always tilting or panning to show you where Hanna is. And yes, in this scene you actually care a bit what happens to her, you root for her to get away from the bad guys...if the rest of the movie had been made with similar gusto, we really would have had something! But as it is, I cannot recommend this movie. A very bland missed opportunity.