hanna the movie review

Home schooling can be a life-saver

“Hanna” is a first-rate thriller about the drawbacks of home schooling. As it opens, a teenage girl is in the act of killing a deer with her bow and arrow, and then as she’s gutting the carcass, a man sneaks up behind and says, “You’re dead!” She engages in a fierce hand-to-hand battle with this man, who turns out to be her father. He has raised her as they lived alone deep in the forest in a house that looks like it was inspired by lots of gingerbread.

Gradually most, not all, of the details come clear. Hanna ( Saoirse Ronan ) has been taught advanced and ruthless killing skills as a means of self-defense against her enemies, who are legion. Her father, Erik ( Eric Bana ), fears for her safety and his own. He is apparently an agent whose skills and knowledge are so formidable that a CIA officer named Marissa ( Cate Blanchett ) is obsessed with capturing him — and the child.

Hanna decides she is ready for the real world, and the two of them plunge back into a confrontation with the CIA. And then we get an odd cross between a fairy tale and a high-tech action movie. It could have been a fairly strained attempt at either, but director Joe Wright (“ Atonement “) combines his two genres into a stylish exercise that perversely includes some sentiment and insight.

Consider how hard it is to be Hanna. You have never known anyone your own age. You have apparently never met a woman. You speak several languages fluently. You are the master of martial arts and adept at many weapons. Your dad has drilled you to memorize every word in a one-volume encyclopedia that looks like it came as a free gift for opening a new account at a savings & loan. So you are all topped up on facts but have no knowledge at all of the real world.

Of course the movie reminded me of “ Kick-Ass ” (2010), the action fantasy about a deadly young girl. I like “Hanna” a good deal more, because in its quirky way, it has something to say, a certain wit and a command of the visual poetry of action. There is nevertheless something disturbing about the conversion of little girls into ruthlessly efficient fighters who can kill dozens of people and not give it a second thought. If Hanna were a 16-year-old boy, how would that feel?

Marissa, the CIA boss, is essentially a wicked stepmother figure. Why she hates and fears Hanna and Erik is hinted at in many ways, and they all amount to this: The father and daughter represent a threat to American security so great that millions of dollars are gladly spent in the effort to capture and neutralize them. Is there a more personal motivation? Is Hanna by any chance the daughter of Marissa and Erik? The thought occurs, because Saoirse Ronan and Cate Blanchett resemble each other in their facial bone structures, and also because — well, there are vibes.

Joe Wright has been known until now for civilized literary adaptations, also including the wonderful Keira Knightley version of “ Pride and Prejudice .” He’s not a vulgarian. He has a purpose here, and I think it’s to stir some of the same fundamental emotional parts that are reached by fairy tales, especially of the Grimm variety.

He demonstrates that action movies need not be mindless. There is a role for creative choreography in them, even in largely CGI scenes like a chase sequence involving shipping containers on a dock. Even when human bodies are not really there, their apparent movements must be choreographed, and that sequence is a beauty.

Wright and his writers, Seth Lochhead and David Farr , do something else that’s effective. They introduce an element of reality. Too many action films exist always at the same unremitting level of violent fantasy. Here, he arranges for Hanna to come across an ordinary British family on vacation. There is a daughter named Sophie ( Jessica Barden ), who I believe must be the first girl her age Hanna has met; indeed, this is her first encounter with a family, and it’s all strange and unfamiliar. The touch of reality brings into focus how peculiar her life has been.

Cate Blanchett seems strange. She allows little humanity into her Marissa; she’s as personable as Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. Perhaps that’s wise. A more human Marissa would introduce tones that might not fit. Her job is to command her minions and focus on the capture of the father and daughter. A chamber in which Hanna is held for a while amusingly reminds us of the James Bond convention that an extraordinary captive demands an extraordinary cell, apparently constructed at great expense for the occasion.

“Hanna” is good, sound filmmaking. It depends on stylistic order and discipline, a clear story map and ingenious action sequences. It is not all banging and flashing. Saoirse Ronan takes on a difficult role and aces it with as much confidence as she did in “Atonement,” in which she played a much different character. To see a movie like this is to gain a new understanding of the mindless confusion of something like “ Battle: Los Angeles .”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Eric Bana as Erik
Cate Blanchett as Marissa
Tom Hollander as Isaacs
Olivia Williams as Rachel
Jason Flemyng as Sebastian
Jessica Barden as Sophie
Saoirse Ronan as Hanna
Seth Lochhead

Directed by

I, The Executioner

The Apprentice

Daddy’s Head

Little Bites

House of Spoils

Memoir of a Snail

V/H/S/Beyond

Latest articles

Chaz Ebert, CEO of RogerEbert.com, Makes Directorial Debut with “Wellness Warrior”

Transcending Hell on Earth in Larisa Shepitko’s “The Ascent”

Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” Sadly Lives Up To Its Title

Fantastic Fest 2024: The Fall, The Birthday, Wake in Fright

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

Cast & crew
User reviews

A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives. A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives. A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

Seth Lochhead
Saoirse Ronan
Cate Blanchett
575 User reviews
409 Critic reviews
65 Metascore
8 wins & 26 nominations

Top cast 32

Marissa Wiegler

Erik Heller

Johanna Zadek
(as Vicky Kreips)

CIA Tech #1

Head of Ops

Camp G Doctor #1

Camp G Doctor #2

False Marissa

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia Such was the physicality of Saoirse Ronan 's role, her combat tactics called for four-hour days of intense training under Dan Inosanto (a Bruce Lee protégé) over a two month period at his Los Angeles, California gym.
Goofs When Hanna first escapes the CIA base in Morocco, she is amazed at an electric light and overwhelmed by the boiling of an electric kettle. Yet a couple of days later, unaided, she can Google "DNA" and find out all about genetic engineering. Seems unlikely. This is addressed in one of the deleted scenes which can be viewed on the DVD. When she walks into the internet café, she actually does receive assistance from an employee in how to use the computer.

Sebastian : So Hanna, is your mum and Dad still together?

Hanna : My mother is dead.

Sophie : [to Sebastian] Nice one, Dad.

Sebastian : I'm sorry to hear that. I lost my mum when I was very young, so...

Hanna : It's all right. It happened a long time ago.

Rachel : Hanna, what did your mum die of?

Hanna : Three bullets.

[Sebastian chokes on his wine]

Crazy credits Words are spoken during the credits. At the end of the first song: "Music: A combination of sounds with a view to beauty of form and expression of emotion". And after the end credits: "Schlaf weiter" (sleep on).
Connections Featured in Great Movie Mistakes III: Not in 3D (2011)
Soundtracks Divagando Written by Pedro Ricardo Miño Performed by Pepa Montes, Pedro Ricardo Miño (as Ricardo Miño), Fabiola Perez, David Rodriguez, Jallal Chekara , Alexis Lefevre, Rafael 'El Electrico', Jesús Ortega, Abel Harana, Manuel Bellido, El 'Lebri', Silvia Rios Bastos, Salvador Antonio Bellido Vizcaino, Jose Fernando Rios Bastos, Ana Maria Garcia Garcia, Soledad Salazar Carrillo, Maria Del Carmen Garcia Salazar, David Crespo Gabarri, Ricardo Heredia Salazar, Maria Esther Salazar Carrillo, Beatriz Amaya Trigo, Antonia Rodríguez Saborido, Catalina García Ventura, Inmaculada Bejar Ruiz, Juan Carlos Muñoz Guajardo

User reviews 575

Joseph-Stevenson
Nov 29, 2011

Saoirse Ronan Through the Years

Is "Hanna" based on a book?
How did Hanna launch her arrow at Marissa without a bow?
Why did Hanna need to trigger the switch, instead of she and Erik just going to kill Marissa?
April 8, 2011 (United States)
United States
United Kingdom
Focus Features (United States)
Official Facebook
Hanna Bí Ẩn
Kemijärvi, Finland
Focus Features
Holleran Company
Sechzehnte Babelsberg Film
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$30,000,000 (estimated)
$40,259,119
$12,370,549
Apr 10, 2011
$63,782,078

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
Dolby Digital

More to explore

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

About Rotten Tomatoes®
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening This Week
Top Box Office
Coming Soon to Theaters
Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

Fandango at Home
Prime Video
Most Popular Streaming Movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

88% Transformers One Link to Transformers One
100% Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story Link to Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
98% His Three Daughters Link to His Three Daughters

New TV Tonight

100% Colin from Accounts: Season 2
100% Matlock: Season 1
100% Brilliant Minds: Season 1
67% Murder in a Small Town: Season 1
43% Rescue: HI-Surf: Season 1
-- Grotesquerie: Season 1
88% Nobody Wants This: Season 1
-- Everybody Still Hates Chris: Season 1
-- Doctor Odyssey: Season 1
-- Social Studies: Season 1

Hanna Reviews

Hanna shows some promise, particularly in Ronan’s versatile performance, but between the overwrought style and underdeveloped script, there’s plenty for Wright to workshop...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2024

There may not be as much grand meaning or deeply affecting substance when compared to his previous works, but Wright and company have created an exciting story, richly told with copious amounts of style.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2023

The plot is preposterous, but Joe Wright, the director, gives the movie enough audacious drive and style for the story to skim over the holes in the narrative logic.

Full Review | Oct 21, 2022

Hanna doesn't bore for a single moment, although it's unintelligible for most minutes. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 6, 2022

“Hanna” is a fun and stylish movie as well as a showcase for young Saoirse Ronan.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2022

The 'perfectly engineered soldier' theme is nothing new, but Wright is less concerned about that. Hanna is a beautifully crafted, smart, funny film that floats above its genre conventions.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2021

Perhaps Hanna is a good film because the action is part of the narrative rather than the narrative being a part of the action.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2021

Even though there are misogynistic undercurrents to the fatal gunshot wound Hanna delivers... Weigler will never die because she lives on in Hanna, and her story will be retold and revised just like the fables women and girls pass on to one another.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2021

Tries so hard to be edgy and different that desperation trumps the minor intrigue brought about by bizarre characters and situations.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 30, 2020

Never quite gels into a cohesive cinematic experience and is, far too often, simply boring.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 10, 2020

We walk out of it with more questions than anything else, which can sometimes be a film's strength ... but that's not the case here.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 10, 2020

Ostensibly a thriller about a teenage assassin, Hanna reveals itself to be a fairytale with a modern twist.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 10, 2020

A unique, often strange take on both an action film and a growing-up story

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 12, 2020

Explosive, intense, heart pounding, riveting, pulsating...and these are just a few of the adjectives to describe Hanna.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2019

It's one hell of a letdown.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.9/5 | Nov 6, 2019

A sleek, willfully preposterous action movie...This is a rare action movie where women rule.

Full Review | Aug 19, 2019

The deeper the story gets, the more convoluted and preposterous it becomes. Still, "Hanna" is a lot of fun, thanks to Ronan and two great action sequences.

Full Review | May 8, 2019

The thing with Joe Wright's beautifully shot movie is that it never really feels true.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 2, 2019

Overall, Saoirse Ronan is a marvelous, powerful actress and Hanna is a great character. Perhaps a sequel to the film Hanna will have a script worthier of both.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 16, 2019

Hanna is a pulse-pounding, lethal fairy-tale actioner.

Full Review | Jan 28, 2019

an image, when javascript is unavailable

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

Hanna: movie review.

Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana also star in the overly showy pursuit thriller from "Atonement" director Joe Wright.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

Share on Facebook
Share to Flipboard
Send an Email
Show additional share options
Share on LinkedIn
Share on Pinterest
Share on Reddit
Share on Tumblr
Share on Whats App
Print the Article
Post a Comment

Moving ever further away from the high-lit reputability of Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, director Joe Wright seems hellbent on proving he’s a high-powered action stylist in Hanna . This sort of reverse-image, quasi-intellectual cousin to Luc Besson’s The Professional stars the exceptional Saoirse Ronan as the daughter of a CIA op, raised to be the perfect soldier spy, who’s unexpectedly forced to cope with a world she doesn’t know and a lethal female adversary from her father’s past. At once enticing and a bit dubious, this arty thriller looks to ride its sterling cast and unusual kicks to decent midrange box office.

One spends a fair amount of time during Hanna wondering if the title character is actually the daughter of the determined CIA agent Marissa, played by Cate Blanchett , who pursues the girl all over Germany. Whatever the outcome of that puzzlement may be, there’s little question that Ronan could eventually inherit Blanchett’s mantle, so strikingly similar are their looks and excess of talent.

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Alec baldwin’s ‘rust’ case was dismissed. what happens to the armorer, nyc mayor eric adams charged with taking bribes and illegal campaign funds from foreign sources, usher’s wonder-ful concert: superstar brings out icon at sold-out l.a. tour date, new york city mayor eric adams has been indicted, sources say, chappell roan says she’s voting for kamala harris, but “endorsing and voting are completely different”, cat glover, singer and dancer who worked with prince, dies at 60.

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

'Hanna': The Spy (Kid) Who Came In From The Cold

Mark Jenkins

Sugar and spice: Raised in a remote cabin in Finland, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is fluent in multiple languages — and fighting styles. But though she can dispatch spies and assassins with ease, there's a lot she doesn't know about the world. Alex Bailey/Focus Features hide caption

Director: Joe Wright
Genre: Action
Running Time: 111 minutes

Rated PG-13 for brutal violence, profanity and a scene in a kinky bar

With: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams

Watch Clips

'I'll See You There'

Media no longer available

Credit: Focus Features

'Don't Follow Me'

'Safari Club'

One way to invigorate a clichéd macho premise is to substitute a girl for the customary testosterone-oozing bruiser. That works reasonably well in Hanna , an arty chase flick that reunites Atonement director Joe Wright with Saoirse Ronan, who played that film's young troublemaker. The movie has more sensibility than sense, but it seems cunning next to such silly tough-girl fare as Kick-Ass and Sucker Punch .

Introduced as she hunts a reindeer near the Arctic Circle, Hanna (Ronan) has been groomed by Erik (Eric Bana) for a particularly fierce adolescence. When the seemingly delicate 16-year-old decides the time is right, she'll activate a beacon — the only electrical device in the rustic cabin where she's been raised — that will draw the attention of Marissa (Cate Blanchett). Then a clash of XX-chromosomed titans will begin.

Marissa wears a near-geometric red wig, speaks in an accent that resembles a Southern drawl and works for a spy agency that suggests the CIA; "rogue asset" Erik vanished from that outfit's radar about 15 years earlier, and has stayed off the grid since. His departure had something to do with Hanna, then a baby, and her late mother, but whatever it is that links Hanna, Erik and Marissa must be an off-the-books operation, since the American spook enlists such freelancers as the affected-but-brutal Isaacs (Tom Hollander) to track her prey.

The basic scenario is a bit Run Hanna Run , complete with hammering techno score, this time by Britain's Chemical Brothers, and darned if the three main characters don't end up in Berlin. But first Hanna is transported to a black-ops interrogation center that turns out to be underneath the Moroccan desert (although it looks like it belongs in an upstate New York art park). Even more willful than the average teenager, Hanna breaks loose from the complex using such commando skills as handgun-firing, throat-slitting and neck-breaking; once free, though, she encounters a few gaps in her education: She's never heard music, seen an electric light, or had a friend her own age.

Hanna attaches herself to a vacationing family of hippies from the U.K., especially to chatty teen Sophie (Jessica Barden), and the holidaymakers transport Hanna — not always knowingly — toward her rendezvous with Erik at an abandoned German amusement park.

The man (Eric Bana) who raised Hanna trained her to "adapt or die" — and the limits of his lessons are tested when the young woman triggers a confrontation with his former employers. Alex Bailey/Focus Features hide caption

The man (Eric Bana) who raised Hanna trained her to "adapt or die" — and the limits of his lessons are tested when the young woman triggers a confrontation with his former employers.

Specifically, Hanna and Erik are supposed to meet in a house dedicated to the Brothers Grimm. Fairy tales, you see, are among Hanna 's motifs: Although she's somehow learned at least a half-dozen languages, Hanna grew up with no computer and only a few books, including her mother's edition of the Grimms' stories; the girl's code word for Marissa is "the witch"; and in one scene a villain emerges from a tunnel entrance designed to look like a wolf's mouth.

As if the contrast between children's fables and Hanna's military-style training weren't vivid enough, Wright sets Hanna in a Europe devoid of Old World charm. In addition to that decrepit kiddie park, the principal locations include a grimy cargo port and a Berlin that's been specially scuzzed-up for the occasion.

Lithe and wide-eyed, Ronan persuasively combines combat reflexes with the first glimmers of empathy. Blanchett is less effective as the movie's fantasy of perfect ruthlessness; Hollander's campy performance helps a little, but the evil side of this duel lacks sizzle.

It doesn't help that the secret Marissa battles to suppress, when finally revealed, proves humdrum. Although its camera moves are fluid and its art direction elegant, Hanna doesn't travel anyplace unusual. The point of all its battling is just to battle.

UK Edition Change

UK Politics
News Videos
Paris 2024 Olympics
Rugby Union
Sport Videos
John Rentoul
Mary Dejevsky
Andrew Grice
Sean O’Grady
Photography
Theatre & Dance
Culture Videos
Fitness & Wellbeing
Food & Drink
Health & Families
Royal Family
Electric Vehicles
Car Insurance Deals
Lifestyle Videos
Hotel Reviews
News & Advice
Simon Calder
Australia & New Zealand
South America
C. America & Caribbean
Middle East
Politics Explained
News Analysis
Today’s Edition
Home & Garden
Broadband deals
Fashion & Beauty
Travel & Outdoors
Sports & Fitness
Climate 100
Sustainable Living
Climate Videos
Solar Panels
Behind The Headlines
On The Ground
Decomplicated
You Ask The Questions
Binge Watch
Travel Smart
Watch on your TV
Crosswords & Puzzles
Most Commented
Newsletters
Ask Me Anything
Virtual Events
Wine Offers
Betting Sites

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Hanna: Review of film starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana

Starring: saoirse ronan, cate blanchett, eric bana, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

The teenage actor Saoirse Ronan looks right at home in the Arctic. With her startling ice-blue eyes, pale skin and fleecy white-blonde hair she's like her own camouflage unit, nearly invisible as she stalks among the snowbound woods of North Finland.

No wonder she can bring down a reindeer with her bow and arrow at 30 paces. Ronan plays Hanna, who's spent her whole life in this frosty wilderness, raised by her widowed father Erik (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA agent who went underground years ago and took his only child with him. Since then he's trained her in the gentle arts of hunting, pistol-shooting and how to snap a man's neck with her bare hands.

Despite having only each other for company, father and daughter get along fine, it seems, in their remote log cabin. He has educated her, rather austerely, from just two books, an old encyclopedia and a collection of fairytales, though she also turns out to be fluent in German, Italian, Spanish and, later, Arabic. "Think on your feet," he tells her, "even when you're asleep." Quite a tall order, that, but if anyone can do it, Hanna can. "I'm ready now," she tells him – for what, we don't yet know – and Erik realises that a teenager, even one who has lived wild with furs and longbows, needs to get out a little.

This intriguing set-up is the work of Joe Wright, a director who has exhibited a lively interest in complex, independent-minded young women. His first film Pride and Prejudice (2005) took on perhaps the most beloved embodiment of the type, while his second, Atonement (2007), went bravely in the opposite direction in terms of sympathy, focusing upon a meddlesome miss whose fantasies bring ruin to her family. This latter was also played by Ronan, who even at 13-years-old gave notice of a scarifying poise to go with that unsettling thousand-yard gaze. Wright is evidently banking on more of the same from his young star in Hanna, the difference being that he's not got Jane Austen (or Ian McEwan) for an ally this time, but a script by Seth Lochhead and David Farr. Could this be why the film, once it emerges from its Arctic fastness, breaks apart so spectacularly?

Once Hanna has been allowed to venture into the big bad world, she instantly becomes the quarry of a hard-as-nails CIA officer, Marissa Wiegler, played by Cate Blanchett in a tailored grey suit and a severe auburn bob. She could almost be auditioning for the role of "Rosa Klebb: the Early Years". Marissa wants the girl and her father eliminated, for reasons that aren't clarified until the film's last reel, though don't torment yourself with intricate psychology – the film-makers certainly haven't. In one of the film's earliest floutings of probability, Hanna is abducted in Finland, imprisoned in an underground concrete bunker, and escapes through a long tunnel into – salam! – Morocco. Even a Bond movie, the most geographically promiscuous in cinema, would throw us the occasional bone of an in-flight scene, or a plane landing. Having footslogged through the desert she has a disorienting night in a hotel room, where her rather lopsided upbringing starts to make life difficult. While Erik may have equipped her to take on Jason Bourne, he hasn't taught her a thing about music, electricity, human interaction. Thanks, dad!

Somehow she attaches herself to a couple of English pseudo-hippies (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) on tour in Morocco, and makes friends with their sensationally annoying daughter (Jessica Barden). And from this point the film keeps conking out, its fuel entirely derived from movie life rather than the real thing. (Lochhead wrote it when he was 24, which may account for its synthetic nature). If Blanchett's Marissa looks only half-baked from celluloid, try making sense of Tom Hollander as the world's shortest and unlikeliest hitman. Hollander's Mr Collins was one of the highlights of Wright's Pride and Prejudice, but here with his peroxide hair and German accent he looks more like a gay-porn impresario. A stop-start chase sequence develops, but it's mysterious why Hanna should be fleeing from him at all – she could beat the shit out of this squirt with one hand tied behind her. If Hanna is the innocent-but-deadly killer we have been led to suppose, then the film must back up that idea. Sadly, consistency is one of its notable victims, particularly in the matter of Hanna's Girl Who Fell to Earth status. We see her freaking out, for instance, when a telephone rings, but later she's perfectly happy downloading stuff from Google.

What baffled me more was why someone as literate as Joe Wright fancied directing this material in the first place. It looks like a script designed to test his patience more than his skill. True, he does one action sequence very well, echoing his bravura (you may argue "show-off") tracking s06052011hot during the Dunkirk arrival in Atonement. Bana, missing from the movie for long stretches, is pursued down into an underground station in Berlin where four G-men ambush him. The style of the fight, the urban location and the sense of conspiracy afoot insistently recall the Bourne movies, though Hanna falls way short of them as entertainment. Does Wright secretly want to be the next Paul Greengrass? Odd, if so, because his best work hitherto suggests a film-maker with a different, more literary voice: his own, in short. Let's hope this vague, derivative thriller is just a blip.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

My Independent Premium
Account details
Help centre

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

For Parents
For Educators
Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

Movie Reviews
Best Movie Lists
Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

Best TV Lists
Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
Common Sense Selections for TV
Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

Book Reviews
Best Book Lists
Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

Game Reviews
Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

Podcast Reviews
Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

App Reviews
Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

YouTube Channel Reviews
YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

Why Your Kid Should Read Banned Books

Family Tech Planners
Digital Skills
All Articles
Latino Culture
Black Voices
Asian Stories
Native Narratives
LGBTQ+ Pride
Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 12 Reviews
Kids Say 37 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Violent thriller is a high-stakes teen-assassin tale.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 15+?

From the opening scene -- when Hanna hunts down a large elk with an arrow and fi

One loud "f--k," plus a few uses of "s--t," "damn," "oh my God," and English sla

Hanna and Sophie flirt with and then go on a date with two attractive guys. Soph

There's a close-up of Marissa's green Prada shoes. Villains drive in a white Ran

Adults are shown with drinks in hand in a couple of brief scenes at a club and a

Any Positive Content?

Most of the negativity revolves around whether it was Hanna's destiny to be the

Except for Hanna's grandmother, there are few positive role models here. Even Ha

Violence & Scariness

From the opening scene -- when Hanna hunts down a large elk with an arrow and finishes it off with a bullet -- to the final moment, when two characters face off, there's barely a scene in the movie without some form of violence. Hanna's father trains her by sparring hand-to-hand and with various weapons. Major and secondary characters are killed in various ways -- bullets to the head or heart, slit throats, arrows to the heart, smashed skulls, knives to the gut, snapped necks, and more. Unlike superhero movies, the violence is realistic and at times quite bloody. Innocent bystanders who've met or spoken to Hanna end up tortured or killed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

One loud "f--k," plus a few uses of "s--t," "damn," "oh my God," and English slang like "mental" and "bugger."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Hanna and Sophie flirt with and then go on a date with two attractive guys. Sophie and her date kiss, but violence gets in the way of Hanna kissing hers. Sophie's parents have loud, camper-van-shaking sex; viewers hear them moaning while Sophie comments about them being "like rabbits." A woman practices a dance at a club, and the owner tells someone she has male and female genitalia, but nothing is shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

There's a close-up of Marissa's green Prada shoes. Villains drive in a white Range Rover.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults are shown with drinks in hand in a couple of brief scenes at a club and at a dinner.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Most of the negativity revolves around whether it was Hanna's destiny to be the kind of trained killer she is or whether her father had a choice and could have raised her in a more peaceful manner. Marissa is an unredeeming villain who values herself over everyone else.

Positive Role Models

Except for Hanna's grandmother, there are few positive role models here. Even Hanna's father has ulterior motives and brings her up to become a tool of vengeance. Sophie's parents seem loving, open-minded, and caring, but their concern is overshadowed by the selfishness and cruelty displayed by Marissa, who's a very cold-hearted villain.

Parents need to know that this action thriller is surprisingly bloody and violent, pushing the limits of the PG-13 rating. There's a startling amount of very realistic violence, even though many of the action sequences are shot in a stylized, rapidly edited manner. Characters are killed in all manner of ways -- with arrows, knives, guns, fists, and everyday objects turned into weapons. With such a high body count and so many bloody deaths (including the torture and implied deaths of innocent bystanders), the movie is pretty iffy for younger teens. In addition to the violence, there's some sexuality (a married couple is overheard making love, and teenagers briefly kiss or try to kiss) and language, including one memorable "f--k." And, ultimately, the movie's messages are fairly negative, suggesting that if you have killer instincts, it's your destiny to give in to them. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (12)
Kids say (37)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Top end of PG-13; slickness doesn't fully obfuscate brutality

What's the story.

Hanna ( Saoirse Ronan ) isn't your typical 15-year-old girl. She's been raised in the remote snowcapped forests of Finland by her protective father, Erik Heller ( Eric Bana ), who has homeschooled her in world literature, linguistics, and how to kill in every conceivable way. One day, he digs out a mysterious-looking device and tells Hanna that if she's "ready," she can flick the switch that makes her presence known to Marissa Viegler ( Cate Blanchett ), an ambitious CIA agent whom Hanna has been instructed to kill at all costs if she's ever to be reunited with her father. She turns the switch on, and thus begins a worldwide cat-and-mouse game between the young assassin and her antagonist. Along the way, Hanna discovers that she, her father, and Marissa are connected in a way she never imagined and that she's genetically "abnormal." If Hanna succeeds, she'll murder Marissa, but Agent Viegler has enlisted the help of a seedy mercenary (Tom Hollander) to capture Hanna first.

Is It Any Good?

Looking at his previous films -- including Pride & Prejudice and Atonement -- it's hard to believe that director Joe Wright helmed the frenetic revenge film that is HANNA. But as the movie progresses, you find his signature touches -- most notably the fact that he trusts Ronan, who received an Oscar nomination for her scene-stealing performance in Atonement , to believably turn into the perfect assassin. But unlike 2010's infamously potty-mouthed killer Hit Girl in Kick-Ass , Hanna isn't coy and school-girlish about her precisely honed skills. She's taken her father's motto -- "adapt or die" -- to heart, but she's not overly manipulative. When she weeps while holding the woman she thinks is Marissa, it's out of genuine relief that she can vanquish the woman she's been trained to murder. Ronan is truly one of the most gifted young actresses working in films. Seeing her on screen with Blanchett is a thrill, because you just know that one day the teen thespian will be as divine an actress as her elder.

Wright's love of a powerful soundtrack is also evident. He memorably used Debussy's Clair de lune in Atonement , and for the rapid-fire action sequences in Hanna , he enlists the help of electronica virtuosos The Chemical Brothers, whose relentless (and occasionally headache-inducing) beats perfectly accompany the unceasing violence and confusion that Hanna's life devolves into for most of the movie. Blanchett and Bana continue to prove that they can immerse themselves in any character, and it's a shame they don't share screen for more than a few minutes. Wright has also highlighted yet another talented young actress, Jessica Barden, who plays Sophie, a quick-witted and hilariously acid-tongued English teen who befriends the eccentric Hanna while on a family road-trip through Morocco and Spain. Barden's scenes with Ronan provide much-needed levity in an otherwise intense adventure.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the amount of violence in the movie. Is it always necessary to show how Hanna kills? Would the movie have been better or worse with less graphic violence?

Marissa says that children can be bad people, too. What do you think about the popularity of young "assassins" like Hanna and Hit Girl , or even Katniss in the Hunger Games books? Why is there so much appeal in female warriors?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 8, 2011
On DVD or streaming : September 6, 2011
Cast : Cate Blanchett , Eric Bana , Saoirse Ronan
Director : Joe Wright
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Focus Features
Genre : Action/Adventure
Run time : 111 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual material and violence
Last updated : March 3, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

The Hunger Games, Book 1

Want personalized picks for your kids' age and interests?

The Professional (Leon)

V for Vendetta

Best action movies for kids, thriller movies.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Hanna Review

06 May 2011

111 minutes

Given he made his name with the subtle dance of manners in Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, Joe Wright’s latest film unexpectedly finds Saoirse Ronan clinging to the underside of a speeding Hummer. At 16, Hanna (Ronan) is unusual for her age, being blessed with a gift for snapping enemy necks as if twisting free the lid of a ketchup bottle while being pursued by, among others, neo-Nazi skinheads and Cate Blanchett. What, as they rarely say in Joe Wright movies, gives? Is the British director daring to reinterpret The Bourne Identity for the Justin Bieber crowd? Is this the long-awaited Very Mean Girls? And what’s with all the slumbering forests, mirrors, and evil Germans?

Hanna, an inspired alchemy of hard-nosed action and dreamlike splendour, is an intentionally strange mix of movie staples: the steely spy thriller, the coming-of-age saga, and the superhero origin story. Wright is of the mind that the squall of blockbusters, video-games and comic books surely serves as the modern fairy tale. Thus he tells a Bourne-like action movie through the rubric of a fable — Hans Christian Andersen refitted with Glocks, smart phones and satellite surveillance, the statutory arsenal of CIA malpractice. It’s a fabulous conceit: the application of storytelling rituals, old magic, to a sleek, contemporary movie machine. The familiar bluster of genre is given the gravity and poise of Wright’s house style, and a feather-light touch of mockery — Jane Austen’s In Like Flint.

Once upon a time, deep in a forest cocooned in winter, a beautiful girl called Hanna lives with her father in a candlelit cottage. By day, he trains her in hand-to-hand combat, to kill with impunity and outfox interrogation in a suite of languages. She’s a gifted pupil, an assassin with skin as white as snow and eyes as blue as sky. By night, he reads from an encyclopaedia, filling her head with fact but not feeling. As she keeps berating him, she’s ready. For what, we wonder. To go out and sample the real world, ripe with sensation and threat? Or perhaps there is a deeper, riskier path waiting for her — a mission to which she was born? Papa (a grim Eric Bana) mentions times, dates, a schedule to meet again by Wright’s mythical workshop in a Berlin still draped in the clandestine dusk of ’60s Cold War thrillers.

Transformed from tween chatterbox, Ronan is stony-faced, a luminous ghost child — Hit-Girl minus the potty mouth. There runs the suggestion that the uncannily agile Hanna might even be superheroic — a crumpled test report declares her DNA to be “ABNORMAL”. Jason Bourne wanted to know who he was; Hanna is preoccupied with a quest for what she is. Ronan adapts to all the film throws at her: the punishing physical journey and the subtle spiritual one as Hanna’s frosty inwardness gradually thaws into humour, even sweetness. In a sun-bright Morocco (these real, undigital locations feel newly discovered) she hooks up with a scatterbrained British family, touring in a clapped-out VW, warily making friends with their gabby daughter (Jessica Barden) — a scenario played largely for laughs. There is an amusing notion, as with many fairy tales, that the story is an allegory of puberty — that difficult stage of self-discovery and black ops.

Blanchett, drawling a deep, sinister Texan accent, makes an imperious wicked witch. She’s a CIA headmistress known as Marissa, given to gazing into a mirror, angrily flossing away flaws in her grimace. Hanna is the rogue outcome of some ancient agency business, and Marissa, savagely clicking her perfect heels, sets about mopping up loose ends: a dark, funny and formidable venture into movie villainy. Bond wouldn’t stand a chance.

Unbound, Hanna plunges across North Africa and Europe, from underground bases — Ken Adam dungeons wormed with air ducts — through flinty deserts and container ports, to a decayed Berlin theme park whose dead amusements are styled to The Brothers Grimm. A chase surging to the electronic spell of The Brothers Chemical further demonstrating Wright’s magical fusion of opposing textures.

In turn, the camera takes on Hanna’s unnatural attributes: its senses are alive, hyperactive and daring. This may be

only an experiment in enlightened genre making, style as subtance, but Wright thrills to the moment. An eight-minute tracking shot accompanies Bana into an orange-bricked U-bahn station to dispatch a quartet of hapless CIA drones. Tight, dreamy close-ups capture two girls giggling beneath sheets, their skin a canvas of innocence — a homage, it seems, to his very own Pride & Prejudice. Self-indulgence aside, he gives the action genre — beaten to a pulp by the battery of digital editing — a newfound vividness. Shots that breathe.

So, it is a little disheartening to hear that Wright has gravitated back to his books to adapt Anna Karenina with Keira Knightley. Not that it won’t carry all his sophistication, but just think what he could do with Transformers.

Movies | 30 01 2019

Movies | 06 01 2019

Joel Kinnaman, Mireille Enos, Esme Creed-Miles

Movies | 08 02 2018

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

April 8, 2011
Saoirse Ronan as Hanna; Eric Bana as Erik; Cate Blanchett as Marissa; Jessica Barden as Sophie; Aldo Maland as Miles; Olivia Williams as Rachel; Jason Flemyng as Sebastian

Home Release Date

September 6, 2011

Distributor

Focus Features

Movie Review

“Fairy tales are more than true,” G.K. Chesterton wrote; “not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

At age 16, Hanna still reads fairy tales. A collection of them is the only book she owns, it seems, in her cold, isolated world—the only bit of art in this austere place. She leafs through the stories, page by page, as she keep close the small pictures she has of her mother, the only thing left of her. The precious minutes skitter by until sleep comes, and morning, and another day of work designed to make her stronger, sharper, deadlier.

Hanna is training to be an assassin.

It’s been so ever since birth. Raised by her father near the Arctic Circle, she and he whittle away their days sparring and hunting. She knows at least five languages and probably more. She can skewer a caribou with a homemade arrow. At night, her father reads to her out of textbooks and encyclopedias—the history of Morocco, the fate of the first cosmonaut, the mechanics of electricity—to prepare her for the day when she leaves this place and takes her deadly skills to the wider world, fulfilling the purpose for which she was raised: to survive, to kill.

But Hanna senses that her training is incomplete. “What does music feel like?” she asks her father. Her father tells her. Or, more precisely, he instructs her from a reference book, relaying information about the collection of pitches and sounds gathered to foster emotion and pleasure. But Hanna isn’t satisfied. She wants to hear music, feel it for herself.

But she’ll have to leave her home, her father, this womb-like forest and walk into the wilds of civilization for that. And she does eventually, as something of a Red Riding Hood. In leaving, she knows she’ll face danger like she’s never known—a wolf dressed not as a grandmother, but a government agent named Marissa, armed with perfect teeth and designer shoes and hungry, deadly eyes.

“She won’t stop until you’re dead,” Erik warns her. “Or she is.”

Hanna’s father taught the girl everything he could—from gutting a deer to snapping a man’s neck. But perhaps it will be Hanna’s attachment to her fairy tales that will win the day in the end … in a world fraught with dragons.

Positive Elements

Hanna is indeed a fairy tale in some respects, featuring a plucky child trying to overcome the brutal, bizarre world she’s been thrown into against her will. It’s also a strangely affecting coming-of-age story. Hanna may be a budding assassin and her father’s a spy on the lam, but the love they share feels real and touching. As the father of a 17-year-old daughter myself, I keenly felt Erik’s reluctance to let his daughter leave the forest, even when she insists—and shows—that she’s ready. She’s crossing the threshold into adulthood, and even though parents train their children from birth to do just that, it doesn’t make it any easier to let go. And we clearly see the tenderness the roughhewn Erik demonstrates in finally allowing her to leave.

When Hanna encounters the rest of our world, it’s revealing to see her experience it as new and fresh … the beauty of music, of dance, of friendship, of a first (almost) kiss. Some of these encounters don’t manifest themselves positively in the film, but to see and feel the joy she discovers in living —relishing what most of us take for granted—is one of the movie’s little gifts.

[ Spoiler Warning ] While we can’t in any way excuse the bloodshed caused by Hanna and her father, context is important here. Hanna is a genetically enhanced child, saved from being aborted after being designed as a “perfect soldier,” genetically less prone to feel fear or compassion. She was one of several babies so engineered—babies killed by Marissa when the project was cancelled. Erik flees the agency, in part, to save Hanna from the same fate, and all his harsh tutelage is primarily about survival: As the last loose thread of the project, Hanna is to be hunted and killed. Hanna is not Erik’s biological daughter, but that doesn’t matter a whit to him (a nod to adoption), who eventually sacrifices his life for his little girl.

Spiritual Elements

Hanna travels across several countries with a British family, and the family’s mother tells Hanna that trips to the countryside “bring us closer to God.” But she says she doesn’t mean it in a monotheistic sense: She’s talking about “Buddha, Krishna, the god within.”

Hanna’s grandmother puts down what appears to be a Bible while talking with Marissa, shortly before Marissa kills her. A cross hangs on the wall of what is, for a time, a safe haven. We see graffiti that reads, “One nation under CCTV.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

The British family that Hanna joins includes two kids: Sophie, a girl about Hanna’s age, and Miles, a boy several years younger. Sophie wears revealing clothing (from midriff-baring tops to bikinis) and encourages Hanna to sneak out with a couple of boys. (Then, when Hanna agrees to do so, Sophie calls her a “ho.”) Sophie says she wouldn’t mind being a lesbian—as long as she could be a pretty Hollywood lesbian who might eventually marry a guy. (And thanks to that comment, some moviegoers may interpret Hanna and Sophie sleeping side by side and Hanna planting a tender kiss on Sophie’s cheek as more than a tender moment between friends.)

When Hanna and Sophie sneak out with the boys, Sophie kisses her date. Hanna asks her guy if he’s going to kiss her. But when their lips are about to touch, she throws him to the ground and puts him in a stranglehold. “I’m going to go now,” Hanna says, very sweetly. “It was nice.”

Marissa hires a hit man who runs a club catering to extreme sexual tastes. When Marissa comes in, he’s watching a hermaphrodite rehearse a striptease—bare breasts covered with an arm or hands.

Sophie discusses breast augmentation surgery. Sophie’s mother talks about how a female’s lips are, through makeup, made to resemble her sexual anatomy.

Violent Content

Almost all of Hanna’ s main characters are killers. While Hanna is trained, in a sense, simply to defend herself, her father believes that the best defense is a good offense. So she kills without mercy. Taken into custody by government agents, she offs two soldiers in the process. Another four meet their end at her hands when she escapes. An example: Hanna tightly hugs an unsuspecting agent before reaching for her head and snapping her neck. When she finally breaks into the wider world, she continues her rampage, snuffing someone out with a slice to the jugular, wounding someone else with an arrow to the gut.

Hanna engages several folks in nonlethal fistfights. Her training is bruising, visceral and chaotic. We see her kill and dress a caribou. And when dispatching wounded prey, she points a gun to their heads and pulls the trigger (the barrel pointed at the camera). Blood sometimes spatters Hanna’s face and clothes.

Erik also kills several people, using knives, guns and, in one instance, a pipe (which he stabs through a man’s chest). The bloodied corpse of one of his victims, a policeman, is fished out of the sea. He exchanges fire with Marissa.

Marissa favors the relative antiseptic dispatch of a handgun, using it frequently and without emotion. In flashback we see that she was the one who gunned down Hanna’s mother, and she kills nearly everyone Hanna meets in her travels.

The hired hit man and his cronies seem to relish their jobs. The hit man ties up and apparently tortures a hotel manager (his face is bloodied and swollen) before stabbing the guy in the heart with a pen. He ties up a man upside-down and shoots him full of arrows. We don’t explicitly see him do it, but we do see the hit man stretch back a bow with bloodied hands, and we later come face-to-face with a pincushioned corpse.

We see war footage on television.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and four or five s-words. Jesus’ name is abused once; God’s name a handful of times.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Adults and a teenager drink wine.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Father and daughter get into some pretty serious fights—and we’re not just talking the verbal variety. Sometimes it’s sparring (as part of her training, Hanna knows her father can attack her at any time), but the two also have a brutal “real” confrontation.

Marissa flosses her teeth with a certain wolfish brutality, spitting a mouthful of blood into the sink. Sophie discusses a fungal infection in her toenails.

When Marissa and Erik face each other for the last time, Marissa asks him why he let Hanna leave. “Kids grow up,” Erik says with a smile. And in that moment, he seems like any other father who watches his child graduate from high school, get married or move away from home.

So in Hanna we see a child become a woman. And we also see a killing machine develop a conscience. Though the girl was built to coldly kill from conception, her contact with the outside world—particularly with one rather bizarre family—warms her. Even though she’s supposedly had her inclinations toward compassion and mercy pulled out of her DNA, she does indeed become compassionate.

“Please,” she begs Marissa. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. Let me go.”

But the movie allows no gentle endings. If this be a fairy tale, it’s a brutal one. The winner survives. The loser is hunted down. And many ancillary innocents with the temerity to get involved are ground to gravel.

Perhaps we can’t judge Hanna too harshly for who she is or tell her who she should become. She’s a genetic experiment whose nature and nurture conspire to turn her face toward darkness. But the filmmakers have no such excuse. They crafted Hanna’s world as surely as Erik honed her skills, making it impossible for her to find true happiness, true redemption. So Hanna becomes a dragon of a film, mired in bloodshed and brutality. And even Mr. Chesterton would have to admit that it’s hard to beat a dragon when you live inside its belly.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Latest Reviews

Faith of Angels

The Wild Robot

Megalopolis

Transformers One

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

Want to stay Plugged In?

Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family , that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!

Hanna Review

She makes hit-girl look like a rookie..

4 out of 5 Stars, 8/10 Score

Where to Watch

More Reviews by Jim Vejvoda

Ign recommends.

Sony Just Doubled the Price of Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS4 Following PS5 Remaster Reveal

Become a Critical Movie Critic
Movie Review Archives

Movie Review: Hanna (2011)

Mariusz Zubrowski
Movie Reviews
No responses
--> April 10, 2011

Amidst the Arctic Circle’s barren snowcaps, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) hunts. With nothing more than a bow-and-arrow, she kills a deer, although to her disappointment, she missed her mark — the creature’s heart. She finishes the job with a pistol — a stare down with the animal’s bloodshot eyes revealing a sense of humanity and sympathy, despite the brutality of her surroundings. However, there is no time for mourning, as her father, Erik (Eric Bana), reminds her, revealing the importance of thinking on one’s feet — especially in these conditions. We learn that he’s been training his daughter in martial arts and firearms, alongside drilling the contents of an encyclopedia into her head every night. But what’s the purpose of disciplining Hanna to such an extent — what’s the usefulness of the young girl being able to recite Germany’s estimated population and speak fluently in several languages if there is no one else to share it with? That, Erik explains, is the role of a transponder that he plops in front of the girl. “If you want to leave, then press it,” he proclaims before warning that if she does, “there will be no going back.”

In his new film, Hanna , director Joe Wright ( The Soloist , Atonement , Pride & Prejudice ) branches out, crafting a solid revenge thriller that combines entertaining action and the fairy-tale sensibilities of the Brothers Grimm stories that the eponymous heroine adores. Unfortunately, although screenwriters Seth Lochhead ( One of Those Days or: How Do I Get a Mark on My Forehead ) and David Farr ( MI-5 ) take great care in weaving together an intricate plot that slowly explains why the duo have been pushed out of society, the big reveal doesn’t do Hanna justice — it makes sense and is somewhat plausible, but there still feels like something’s missing — a bit of soul left forgotten.

That notwithstanding, Hanna’s journey from isolated cabin to sleazy cityscapes has its interesting moments — largely due to Wright’s direction. In combination with The Chemical Brother’s signature soundtrack, a haunting orchestra of synth-beats and drums, and mesmerizing camera shots and editing (all of which have excellent cohesion), Hanna retains entertainment value, even when its narrative begins to dampen.

But the cast delivers each line with vigor throughout. That includes Cate Blanchett ( The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ), who commands the screen as Marissa, a ruthless CIA agent hell-bent on capturing the girl, while hiding her own twisted intentions from coworkers. Also in the role of a villain is Tom Hollander ( Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ) as Isaacs, a club-owning thug whom Marissa enlists the help of. The actor adds another layer of creepiness (channeling his inner Malcolm McDowell), constantly brutalizing his victims, while remaining undeniably fashionable in the latest gym suits and whistling a nightmarish show-tune.

Regardless, the star of the show is Ronan, a talented young face, whose previous performances managed to save stinkers such as The Lovely Bones and The Way Back . As Hanna, the actress displays a sense of danger, while retaining the character’s childlike innocence. Her delivery is oftentimes flawless.

Wright’s latest is an engaging departure from his earlier work. Undeterred by the feeling that it could have been even better, Hanna draws inspiration from films like A Clockwork Orange , by establishing an intoxicating world full of sin. And watching the oblivious Hanna interact with this corruption is just as intriguing as watching her single-handedly escape a high-security prison.

Eventually I'll put something nifty here. Until then, know that I'm watching you. Closely.

Movie Review: Justice League (2017) Movie Review: My Scientology Movie (2015) Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (2016) Movie Review: Creed (2015) Movie Review: The Green Inferno (2013) Movie Review: Sicario (2015) Movie Review: Terminator Genisys (2015)

'Movie Review: Hanna (2011)' has no comments

| Log in

‘Hanna’ Review: My So-Called Killing-Machine Life

By David Fear

You may or may not have caught Joe Wright’s 2011 thriller Hanna. If not, we’ll give you a quick recap. Saoirse Ronan is a feral young woman living in the Bavarian forest with a former secret-ops agent played by Eric Bana. When she was a baby, he saved her from extermination — the kid was part of a government-sponsored experiment, genetic superiority, human weapons, yadda yadda yadda. A C.I.A. operative, i.e. Cate Blanchett as an obsessive-compulsive sociopath, is determined to hunt them down and kill them. Tom Hollander also shows up as a fey assassin of sorts who hangs out with a pair of skinheads. Every actor talks in an accent that is not their own. There are close-ups of bloody teeth-flossing; a few Bourne -style fight sequences involving Ronan and Bana, respectively; an incredibly well-edited gunfight in a hotel room; and more references to Grimm fairy tales than is legal in most states. Trust us when we tell you that it’s even more batshit then it sounds.

40 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2019

The good news is that anyone who tunes in to Amazon Prime’s Hanna, the eight-episode series that riffs on and builds upon this story (and premieres on March 22nd), doesn’t need to have seen the movie to immediately get the picture. Created by the film’s co-writer David Farr, it spends its first two episodes setting the stage, recasting the characters and, in a few cases, recreating specific scenes from its big-screen predecessor. For folks who dig Wright’s version, the effect is a little like an in-joke in stereo — a delightful bit of déjà vu. And should the original Hanna -heads worry that this show risks becoming nothing but a remake, the last two episodes to take the original narrative on an intriguing detour into WTF territory. It’s what happens in between the opening salvo and the up-the-stakes conclusion that’s a little on the shaky side. The question is not whether the series branches off into the equivalent of a video game’s side missions so much as: why ?

Editor’s picks

The 100 best tv episodes of all time, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, 25 most influential creators of 2024.

The essential premise remains the same: Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) lives off the grid and in the woods alongside her father figure Erik (Joel Kinnaman). He has trained her well in the survivalist arts, in addition to keeping her prepared for possible attacks from outside forces. Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos) is the in-house Javert on their trail, using the vast intelligence-agency resources at her fingertips to tie up loose ends. A series of cat-and-mouse games ensue, made all the more complicated by the fact that the mouse has enhanced senses and an extraordinary talent for hand-to-hand combat.

From here, Farr and his writing team start to look at each new chapter as a series of spun-out what if’s: What if, after Erik has arranged for a rendez-vous point with his ward in Berlin, he also meets up with a Baader-Meinhof-like group? What if, after Hanna escapes her captors and hides out with a family of British tourists (as she does in the movie), she later goes to England and lives with them in the suburbs on the sly for a while? What if they gave Marissa a French boyfriend with a kid, an asshole boss (Khalid Abdalla), a therapist and PTSD? What if you actually got to see Erik rescue Hanna from the facility she was born in, plus a lot more unsolicited backstory on her mom (bonus: she’s played by Cold War ‘s Joanne Kulig)? And what if that statement about the other members of this female super-soldier experiment being dead was, shall we say, not exactly the whole truth?

Out of the five strands we just mentioned, most viewers would not have assumed that the second one, involving Hanna and a teen named Sophie (Rhianne Barreto), would be the one to take up so much oxygen. But guess what? Even though the latter has watched Hanna dispatch a number of thugs with ruthless efficiency in a train station, she still gives her new best friend shelter once our heroine goes on the lam. From this point on, we’re stuck in a sort of show-within-the-show — call it My So-Called Killing-Machine Life — that follows Hanna negotiating life as a normal young woman after years of being a rural recluse. Give the show credit for never exploiting the fact that the world’s deadliest teenager is trying to play off her particular set of skills. But other than a well-aimed kick in the face at a kid during a movie night and a nasty wrist-bending, the series doesn’t do much with the notion, either. The whole thing devolves into a love triangle involving the two girls and a local boy (Gamba Cole). Adolescence is filled with heartbreak, agony and ecstasy no matter who you are, it tells us. And occasionally, black-op types will try to murder you. The teenage years are such a bummer!

'The Dirt' Review: Too Fast for Love — and Facts, Fans, Fun

'love, death & robots' review: netflix's 'heavy metal' for post-millennials.

To be fair, the other additional storylines feel like they’re merely padding out the running time as well — this just happens to be the biggest offender. The idea is to flesh these characters out so we care about the outcome more (we think), but the overall effect is that Hanna feels extremely baggy to a fault, as if it’s merely killing time between action set pieces. And as for those, they run the gamut from chopped-up-to-a-fault in the editing room to characterized by some clumsy stunt-double work. When a character in the run’s back half dispatches two goons with hands, feet and a hidden butcher knife in a single shot, the effect is exhilarating by default.

And for all of its various attempts to balance Eastern European espionage, half-hearted explorations of parenting and femininity, a youth drama, a father-daughter story, a pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller, a character study (though kudos to Mireille Enos for what she does with her Marissa) and the kind of pulp pleasure where a young girl can gun down an army without blinking, it never really finds a groove to settle into. It’s almost like channel-surfing past a half-dozen different shows that happen to share the same drabness. For viewers who still mourn the loss of The Killing, the chance to see that show’s stars share screen time again may be enough to make everything else forgivable. (And for viewers who simply want to see Kinnaman slather goose fat all over his torso: We do not judge you.) But Hanna doesn’t leave you feeling that there was really that much story left to tell. The amount of dead air is staggering. Not everything deserves the Buffy the Vampire Slayer treatment. Maybe two hours was enough.

Ana de Armas Joins John Wick's Criminal Underworld in 'Ballerina' Trailer

But Wait, There's More
By Larisha Paul

Tegan and Sara Reveal Shocking Details Around Catfishing Scheme in Doc Trailer: They 'Destroyed My Life'

Everything Isn't Awesome!!!
By Kory Grow

'The Last of Us' Celebrates 'Outbreak Day' With New Season Two Teaser

Happy Outbreak Day
By Daniel Kreps

See Angelina Jolie Summon Opera Singer Maria Callas' Deep Emotion in 'Maria' Trailer

'colin from accounts': still the premier dog-owner rom-com from down under.

By Alan Sepinwall

Most Popular

Hollywood can’t ditch its teslas fast enough: “they're destroying their leases and walking away” , 50 cent sets diddy abuse allegations docuseries at netflix: 'it's a complex narrative spanning decades' (exclusive), archaeologists solve mystery behind black tombstone found in jamestown carrying an english knight, insiders say ben affleck is ‘treading a dangerous line’ with his treatment of jennifer lopez, you might also like, ‘the life of chuck’ sells to neon after winning tiff’s audience award (exclusive), naomi campbell and fashion for relief’s directors banned from being charity trustees, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, how will theaters handle the ‘megalopolis’ live scene with adam driver when it opens wide, ackman’s pershing reports 38% stake in oakland a’s las vegas team.

Supported by

Review: Amazon’s ‘Hanna,’ Genetically Modified for Streaming Video

Share full article

By Mike Hale

March 29, 2019

“Hanna,” released in 2011, was not a film that called out for a remake or a sequel. It had a singular style, and a delicacy — despite its frequent beatdowns and gun battles — that would suffer from duplication. Bookended by parallel killings, it was a self-contained chronicle of an obsessive and successful quest for revenge that left no important questions unanswered.

So of course there’s a new “Hanna,” a series created for Amazon Prime Video by one of the film’s screenwriters (David Farr) with the film’s director (Joe Wright) as a consultant. It tells a story similar in outline to the one in the movie: Hanna, a genetically altered teenage girl raised in the forest and trained for battle by the gruff father figure Erik, goes out into the world to confront Marissa, the wicked witch-C.I.A. agent-evil stepmother who created her. Except now it’s close to eight hours long instead of two.

Like its heroine, the series is an exercise in modification — how to quadruple a story’s length as well as leave it open-ended. And as with Hanna herself, the results are mixed: mostly sad, with a glimmer of hope at the end.

One of Farr’s primary strategies (he wrote seven of the series’s eight episodes) is to jettison the original’s most distinctive feature. The film told a fairly conventional action story in the style of a fairy tale, with explicit references to the Brothers Grimm to drive the point home, and Wright had the technique and sensibility to make it work. The characters functioned as both action-movie conventions and mythical heroes and monsters. The story moved through fantastic (but real) landscapes by a fairy-tale logic, and the viewer shared Hanna’s wonder at the beauty and corruption of the world she’d been sequestered from.

In the series the Grimms are gone, and Hanna (played by the young British actress Esme Creed-Miles) is less magical heroine and more angtsy teenage supersoldier — la femme Nikita without the clingy dresses. The heroes are less heroic and the baddies less monstrous, and their back stories are expanded in ways that make them more “complex” but no more interesting. The mysteries of Hanna’s past are explored in much greater detail, while the sense of mystery never quite takes hold.

The literalization of the story for streaming-series purposes is encapsulated in the new opening, a long, expository chase scene that was a brief flashback in the film. Another crucial change in the first episode, discreetly slipped into the dialogue, recasts the entire plot, changing the motive for Hanna’s mission from revenge to survival — a switch that lowers the intensity but opens the door for complications, digressions and future seasons.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

Writing Advice
Movie Reviews
Book Reviews
Spies and Espionage
Alternative History
Friends Doing Cool Stuff

Email Address

Hanna: Movie Review

Hanna stars Saoirse Ronan as Hanna Heller, Eric Bana as Erik Heller and Cate Blanchett as Marissa Wiegler. Joe Wright directed it from a screenplay by Seth Lochhead and David Farr and released it in 2011. Saoirse Ronan is best known for her role in Atonement and Eric Bana’s most famous spy thriller role was Munich .

Warning: Major spoilers are blacked out like this [blackout]secret[/blackout]. To view the spoilers, just highlight them.

Hanna: Title

The title is the name of the Protagonist of the story, a classic title archetype.

(For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel )

Hanna: Logline

When a teenage assassin’s mission goes wrong, a ruthless CIA agent pursues her across Europe and she must come to terms with the secrets of her childhood in order to survive.

(For how to write a logline, see The Killogator Logline Formula )

Hanna: Plot Summary

Hanna Heller is a 16-year-old girl. She lives in hiding with her father, Erik, in a cabin in an arctic forest.

Erik has trained Hanna from early childhood in spycraft, languages, combat, and survival skills. Now he plans to use her to assassinate Marissa Wiegler, the CIA officer he blames for the death of Hanna’s mother.

Hanna is now ready for the revenge mission. She activates a homing beacon that will tell Marissa where she is. Erik checks Hanna has memorised their rendezvous point in Berlin, where he expects her to travel after the assassination. He leaves the cabin, and Hanna waits there for the CIA to capture her and take her to Marissa.

In CIA captivity, Hanna repeatedly asks for Marissa. But Marissa is cautious and sends in a lookalike. Hanna kills the impostor. Believing she has fulfilled the first part of her mission, Hanna escapes from the CIA facility and finds herself in the Moroccan desert.

Back to Berlin

Hanna befriends a British family with a camper-van and hitches a ride to Spain, heading for her rendezvous. Along the way, she learns a little about the modern world that she has not been a part of until now.

Marissa’s henchmen eventually track Hanna and the British family down. Hanna escapes, but Marissa captures the family and interrogates them, discovering Hanna is heading to Berlin.

In Berlin, Hanna goes to the rendezvous point in an abandoned fairy-tale theme park. There, she meets a friend of her father’s who gives her a different address.

Marissa arrives and Hanna overhears her say that [blackout]Erik is not her actual father[/blackout]. Shocked and confused, Hanna escapes and goes to confront her father.

Nature or Nurture?

Erik [blackout]admits he is not Hanna’s biological father. He was a recruiter for a program in which children had their DNA altered to make them tougher and less emotional, hoping to develop perfect soldiers. The CIA cancelled the project and Marissa murdered all the genetically modified children except for Hanna, who Erik saved.[/blackout]

Marissa [blackout]and her henchmen arrive. Erik distracts them so Hanna can escape. Erik kills all the henchmen, but Marissa shoots him and chases Hanna back to the theme park.[/blackout]

Marissa [blackout]corners Hanna. Hanna says she doesn’t want to kill Marissa, but Marissa, who seems conflicted in her attitude toward Hanna, shoots her. Hanna shoots her back with an arrow. They are both hurt, but Marissa seems more seriously injured than Hanna. Marissa disappears into a tunnel. Hanna chases after her.[/blackout]

About [blackout]to kill Hanna, Marissa slips and slides down the water flume, dropping her gun. Hanna picks up Marissa’s gun and kills her with it.[/blackout]

(For more on summarising stories, see How to Write a Novel Synopsis )

Hanna: Analysis

Things are looking grimm.

Although spy themed, Hanna is really a fairy tale. Hanna herself is a successor to any number of fairy tale heroines; Marissa is the wicked witch. Erik is the wise old king. The movie does lack a dashing prince to save the princess, that line of thinking being rather old-fashioned these days. Teenage princesses save themselves from the big, bad wolves these days.

Fairytale imagery abounds. Some of the cinematography, particularly the final showdown in the theme park, is of stunning beauty. The theme park is an actual place, the Spree Park in Berlin, and once upon a time was East Germany’s flagship tourist attraction. The park went bankrupt after the Berlin Wall came down and is now abandoned, providing a perfect surreal scene for the film’s dénouement.

Another fairy tale reference is the mirror image book-ending sequences. In the opening, Hanna kills a deer. At the end, she sees a deer [blackout]and then kills Marissa[/blackout]. The first and last lines are both, ‘I just missed your heart’, making a satisfying completion of Hanna’s journey away from childhood.

The Real-o-Meter

Hanna scores a one out of ten on the Real-o-Meter. No sixteen-year-old girl [blackout]no matter how genetically enhanced [/blackout] can fight three fully grown men at once, climb sheer cliffs and, seemingly, become invisible. One sequence shows Hanna leaping from a vertical shaft onto the underside of a speeding vehicle. This is so far beyond the bounds of possibility as to break suspension of disbelief completely. Another where Marissa can’t see Hanna hiding under a bed is similarly unbelievable.

Another Teenage Spy?

A teenage assassin trained by an older man? Comparisons with Leon are inevitable, and Leon is, in my opinion, the superior film. However, the movie also reminded me of Run Lola Run, because it has a lot of visual chase sequences, all scored with pounding techno music. The soundtrack, produced by the Chemical Brothers, is prominent throughout the film.

Hanna is, loosely, a family film. The USA rated it PG-13 and the UK 12. The theme of growing up and becoming independent of both good and evil parental figures is a perennial young adult one. Also, I’m sure the kick-ass teenager heroine will appeal to many young adults. For the adult viewer, it probably holds a little less lasting interest, as the story is straightforward with no real twists. The revelation that [blackout]Hanna is genetically engineered[/blackout] is so heavily telegraphed that few would be surprised by it.

One question is unresolved: the fate of the family that helps Hanna. Marissa, who is holding them, is ruthless, and her chief henchman is a psychopath. So, it seems clear that they would have been killed. Presumably, we don’t see their deaths in order to secure the PG-13/12 rating.

The Alternate Ending

The ‘alternate ending’ on the DVD is not so much a real alternate as a deleted scene. It’s a postscript showing Hanna returning to her father’s house in the woods. She puts her homemade clothes on over the modern ones she adopted on her mission and greets her wolf pups. Her voiceover implies ‘life goes on’ which creates an optimistic feeling and, to me, weakens the wow factor of the theatrical ending.

Hanna: My Rating

A must watch if you are/have a teenager. Otherwise, a straightforward ‘suspend-disbelief’ chase thriller with great visuals and a fairytale atmosphere.

Want to watch it?

The DVD is on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here .

Agree? Disagree?

If you’d like to discuss anything in my review, please email me . Otherwise, feel free to share it using the buttons below.

In Movie Reviews , Spies and Espionage
Assassins CIA Movies Reviews Spies and Espionage Young Adult

← Previous Post

Screen Rant

'hanna' review.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Original Moana Voice Actor Addresses New Live Action Actress Who Will Co-Star With Dwayne Johnson

Bad boys: ride or die's netflix release date revealed, rebecca ferguson's netflix thriller movie adds fast & furious franchise star.

Screen Rant's Kofi Outlaw Reviews Hanna

The classic princess fairytale is currently being thoroughly deconstructed and reassembled for the modern movie audience, and so far the results have been a mix of spot-on modern sensibility ( Tangled ) or, more often, a spotty patchwork of undercooked ideas ( Alice In Wonderland, Red Riding Hood , Sucker Punch ).

Out of this struggle to find a new way to spin the "damsel in distress" tale comes Hanna , director Joe Wright's ( Atonement ) unique vision of the fairytale princess reinvented as Jason Bourne.

The plot is classic fairytale with a modern edge: Once upon a time, a young girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) lived with her father, a former CIA agent (Eric Bana), in the forest. Daddy taught daughter everything he knew and trained her to be the best little warrior she could be, so that one day she would be ready to face an evil CIA agent named Marissa Wiegler, who had been searching high and low across the land for the young girl and her father.

When the young girl starts to come of age, she decides to venture out into the big bad world beyond the nice little bubble she grew up in, in order to slay the evil agent pursuing her. But the evil CIA agent and her henchman have Hanna in their sights as well - and if she doesn't get them first, they will get her...and her daddy, too.

If you don't see the fairytale parallels yet, just replace the words "young girl" with "young princess," "former CIA agent" with "kindly king/hunter" and "evil CIA agent" with "evil queen" or "big bad wolf." See it now? However, fairytales have never been as action-packed as Hanna is.

The idea of Cinderella or (more specifically) Little Red Riding Hood being re-imagined as a teenage assassin is creative enough, but director Joe Wright takes things a step further in the right direction by actually filming this movie in the modernized style of a fairytale. This makes a delicious bit of sense, considering that Hanna views the real world as a fairytale land: a strange place she's only heard about from the encyclopedias her daddy used to read her.

One scene (Hanna's stay in a shoddy hotel) hammers this real world/fairytale world juxtaposition home with hilarious results; when Hanna is making her escape from a government facility early on in the film, the camera spins in circles, just as the young heroine's world is spinning out of control (a classic fairytale movie trope). On the whole, the film is a tightly-edited patchwork of visual iconography, allusion and symbolism - just like you would find in the illustrations of a Brothers Grimm fairytale. The fantastical tone of the film also plays well when juxtaposed to the more grounded, grittier moments of action and violence - of which there are plenty.

Any good fairytale odyssey is a mix of the lovely, the scary and the strange, and Wright wisely includes all three along Hanna's journey of self-discovery. Tim Burton and Catherine Hardwicke tried to create such fairytale worlds in Alice In Wonderland and Red Riding Hood , respectively; however, neither of those hollow realms engaged the eye like this wonderful, slightly twisted world that Joe Wright creates with little more than some keen camera framing and some smart location scouting. He essentially transforms the real world into a fairytale world, just as Hanna sees it. A brilliant tactic for this particular film.

The cast does a stellar job of selling what could've otherwise been a hokey mashup of genres. Saoirse Ronan got her big break working with Joe Wright on Atonement , and clearly the pair have a strong bond as far as bringing out the best in one another. Director and star are totally in synch in terms of their vision for the film: Ronan plays Hanna with that wide-eyed and innocent worldly fascination you would imagine Rapunzel had when she eventually escaped the tower. But instead of long flowing hair, Hanna is packing some seriously kick-ass martial arts skills.

Ronan handles the physical challenges of her role so gracefully and easily that it's hard not to believe that this pale, lanky, teenage girl could snap your neck in real life. Every action sequence she performs will likely make you either raise your eyebrows or drop your jaw in delight. In short: Ronan makes Angelina Jolie's Salt performance look downright forced and hammy. This girl has a future doing action movies if she wants to pursue it.

Eric Bana is a solid actor, and here he is, yet again, solid in his performance as Hanna's father - although his understated affections are a bit too understated to give the father/daughter dynamic a whole lot of poignancy. That's okay, though: it would be reductive to turn this sort of femme-powered fairytale into a cliche about a young girl and her daddy issues.

There are a couple of familiar faces that turn up in supporting roles, but the two standouts for sure are Tom Hollander ( Godsford Park ) as Isaacs, Marissa Wiegler's evil henchman, and young Jessica Barden ( Tamara Drewe ) as a young girl named Sophie, who Hanna befriends. Barden definitely steals nearly every scene she's in (bringing needed levity to the fantastical proceedings), and her and Ronan together are better than most teen buddy flicks you're likely to encounter any time soon.

Of course by now it's no revelation to say that Cate Blanchett is one of the best actresses working in the business. Her evil queen/Big Bad Wolf mix of a CIA agent is a purring Southern Belle with impeccable shoes and a neurotic obsession with keeping her perfect teeth clean, while keeping her well-manicured hands bloody. Truly a great villain in the sense of both a fairytale and an action/espionage movie (not an easy mix to pull off).

Finally, the soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers deserves tons of recognition. The Electronica duo's bass-thumping tunes meld perfectly with some light airy princess melodies, firmly cementing the unorthodox marriage of spy-action and fairytale aesthetic the film is aiming for. The music doesn't just add to the movie - in this case the music helps make the movie. Without The Chemical Brothers' tracks, this would've been a different (read: far less enjoyable) experience altogether.

All in all, Hanna is a truly fresh, unique, and exciting genre mashup. In an era where so many filmmakers are "re-imagining" things - ultimately in ways we've seen before, or ways that feel more hollow than imaginative - this film is a rare, and welcome, gem.

Check out the trailer for Hanna :

[poll id="146"]

Hanna (2011)

Hanna is an action thriller film directed by Joe Wright. Saoirse Ronan stars as the titular character, a young girl trained to be an assassin by her father, played by Eric Bana. Raised in isolation, Hanna's mission leads her across Europe while evading a relentless intelligence agent, portrayed by Cate Blanchett. The film weaves intense action sequences with a coming-of-age narrative, exploring themes of identity and survival.

Movie Reviews
4 star movies

Reviewed by: Steve Warburton CONTRIBUTOR


Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience:
Genre:
Length:
Year of Release:
USA Release:

murder in the Bible

performing genetic experiments on humans

Why do movies featuring girls as highly trained killers appeal to certain audiences?

FILM VIOLENCE —How does viewing violence in movies affect families? Answer

“Adapt or die”—training motto of Hanna’s father

Teen Qs™—Christian Answers for teenagers

Featuring	—Hanna —Marissa Wiegler —Erik Heller Olivia Williams—Rachel
Director	” (2005), “ ” (2007), “ ” (2009)
Producer
Distributor	, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal/Comcast

“Young. Sweet. Innocent. Deadly.”

W e meet Hanna (Saoirse Ronan—“ Atonement ,” “ The Lovely Bones ”), who lives alone in the wilds of North Finland with her her widowed dad, an ex-CIA man. She’s been homeschooled all her life, using an encyclopedia and a book of fairy tales. Her papa Erik ( Eric Bana ) is primarily teaching her how to fight, how to speak dozens of different languages, and how to survive. These skills come in handy when Hanna decides she wants to venture out in the real world. But doing so attracts the attention of a federal agent, played by Cate Blanchett , who wants to capture her and her father, because, for some reason, they pose a threat to American security.

I kick myself a little, because I went to see this movie with a Christian friend and her nine-year-old daughter. Some parts of the film were a little violent, and I wanted to cover the daughter’s eyes, but, aside from that (and a scene where the Cate Blanchett character goes into a strip club to hire a mercenary), the movie is quite tame. There’s even a point when our titular character learns that her mother once earmarked her for an abortion . To me and my friend, this was quite a pro-life moment. Hanna couldn’t have been more than 15, and now she’s contemplating that her mama wanted to abort her, before a top secret government experiment gave her a new lease on life.

So “Hanna” asks some important moral questions. Is it okay to genetically modify human DNA? Is it okay to treat people as experiments, rather than human beings?

The F-word appears just once in “Hanna.” Isn’t that wonderful? Also, someone says “for Christ’s sakes,” and OMG. These are the only instances of profanity that I remember in a movie that is actually quite tame, compared to a lot of Hollywood action thrillers. If you can get past that, “Hanna” is an intelligent thriller that asks some deep ethical questions.

Violence: Heavy / Profanity: Moderate / Sex/Nudity: Moderate

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

Young people
Non-viewer comments

Review: ‘Lee’ and star Kate Winslet bring the WWII photojournalist to hardened, complex life

A woman in a helmet takes a photograph in a wallpapered room.

Copy Link URL Copied!

One of the animating questions in a film about a war correspondent is “Why?” Why do they do what they do? Why do they keep pushing, searching, exposing themselves to the suffering of war? It’s the primary question at the center of the new biopic “Lee,” about the famed photographer Lee Miller, who captured some of the most indelible images of the Holocaust as a reporter for Vogue during World War II. The question is posed by a young man ( Josh O’Connor ) interviewing a prickly Miller (Kate Winslet) about her life and work at her home in England in 1977, probing and provoking her in the hopes of extracting more profound answers than her usual caustic one-liners.

This framing device encircles just one remarkable chapter of the wild and colorful life of Miller, who lived so much both before and after the war. An American model and fine art photographer, she had already been the muse and lover of Man Ray, and had taught photography in New York City. When we catch up with her in the late 1930s, she’s gallivanting around the south of France with her friends, the group blithely unaware of the horrors that await with the rise of Adolf Hitler. In just a few short years, Miller will find the purpose that drives her, as well as traumas that almost destroy her.

Winslet, who produced “Lee” in addition to starring in it, has spent nine years developing the project, working with Antony Penrose , Miller’s son and the author of the book “The Lives of Lee Miller,” which was adapted by screenwriters Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee (Lem Dobbs also has a “story by” credit). The script is crafted in a traditional biopic format, with a twist that lends itself to Penrose’s experience writing about his mother’s life, trying to make sense of it.

a photo collage of 4 movie theater facades side by side

The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles

We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.

Nov. 22, 2023

Ellen Kuras, a lauded cinematographer, television director and Oscar-nominated documentarian, makes her narrative feature directing debut on “Lee.” She and Winslet have known each other since Kuras shot “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and her career as a cinematographer lends itself well to the subject of the female gaze in wartime. Miller seeks out the women in war, not just because she’s often shut out of male spaces, but because she is compelled to, and it soon becomes one of her artistic and journalistic obsessions.

Though Miller is often spoken about in the context of her famous affairs (Winslet has a lovely, sensual chemistry with Alexander Skarsgard, playing her husband, Roland Penrose), much of “Lee” is devoted to her working relationships and close friendships. In addition to Marion Cotillard and Noemi Merlant, who play Lee’s French confidantes, Andrea Riseborough co-stars as Audrey Withers, Lee’s editor and champion at Vogue, while Andy Samberg, in his first purely dramatic role, plays Davy Scherman, an affable New York photographer who becomes Lee’s professional partner as they report from war zones in France and Germany.

Samberg is a revelation here, delivering a subtle but incredibly moving performance. Winslet’s powerful and daring Lee, a force of nature, has her own fears and vulnerabilities, and she finds comfort in Davy, a rare man who feels safe enough to trust. During the liberation of France in 1944, she hears of missing people and they drive deep into Germany at the very end of the war to uncover the ugly reality of the Holocaust, relentlessly pushing forward in search of the truth.

“Lee” is anchored by a stunning extended sequence as Lee and Davy document the wreckage and human destruction of Hitler’s regime: Nazi suicide pacts, piles of corpses, concentration camps, prisoners and victims. It slowly builds to the capturing of an iconic photo of Lee bathing in Hitler’s bathtub, one of the most famous images of her. In the context of the film, it all makes perfect sense: After witnessing the human toll of Hitler’s murderous wake, it seems apt to humiliate or dominate him in this specifically feminine way. In the film, Lee is both the model and the author of this image and creating it is cathartic, leading to an emotional breakdown for Davy, delicately conveyed by Samberg. The flinty Lee remains stoic, speaking through her work, drowning her emotions in booze and pills.

Winslet is tremendous as always, embodying Lee’s gruff, no-nonsense persona, a hardened exterior underneath which a great wound still bleeds. It finally comes pouring forth in a stunning confession, illuminating every action that came before. This is a penetrating biopic, and while it may take a familiar shape, the pioneering woman at the center was anything but traditional.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Lee'

Rating: R, for disturbing images, language and nudity Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, Sept. 27

Review: In ‘Dance First,’ a biopic of Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Byrne portrays the man, not the myth

Aug. 9, 2024

Review: ‘Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger’ celebrates a colorful partnership

July 26, 2024

Kirsten Dunst, left, and Cailee Spaeny in 'Civil War'

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

April 16, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Fink (Pedro Pascal), Roz (Lupita N’yongo), and Brightbill (Kit Connor) in DreamWorks Animation’s Wild Robot

Review: Exquisite ‘The Wild Robot’ uses machines and animals to tell a human story

Attendees network at the Project Odyssey AI Film Gala in San Francisco hosted by venture capital firm a16z and Civitai, a platform used for creating, discovering and sharing generative AI resources and art. (Michael Ogata/Project Odyssey)

Hollywood Inc.

We went to a gala for AI-produced movies. Here’s what we saw

Sept. 26, 2024

Kit Connor photographed in the Los Angeles Times Studios at RBC House, during the Toronto International Film Festival

From gentle ‘Heartstopper’ to romantic ‘Romeo,’ Kit Connor wants to show his range

Sept. 25, 2024

Why Saoirse Ronan’s moment is right now

Meet the makeup wizard who transformed Sebastian Stan into ‘A Different Man’

Sept. 20, 2024

A girl stands on a snowy lawn while behind her, a man in white watches.

Review: ‘Longlegs’ walks in with a wintry moodiness, and its thrills are just getting started

July 19, 2024

Will Ferrell and Harper Steele sit next to each other and smile for a portrait

The trans ‘Will & Grace’ is here, and it’s a Netflix road movie starring Will Ferrell

Sept. 23, 2024

Will Reeve on the set of "Good Morning America" on 4/30/24 on ABC.

Will Reeve of ABC News, Christopher Reeve’s son, has a cameo in new ‘Superman’ movie

July 3, 2024

Anora Review: Mikey Madison Is Exhilarating in Sean Baker's Screwball Comedy [Fantastic Fest]

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

With Anora , filmmaker Sean Baker has delivered an exhilarating screwball comedy for the modern era featuring an electric performance from Mikey Madison as the eponymous stripper who falls head-over-lucite heels for the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. The winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes and easily Baker's most entertaining film to date, Anora is the sort of intoxicating character study that the filmmaker has become known for – a riveting slice of life on the margins of society with John Cassavetes' DNA coursing through its veins .

The Contemporary Answer to Pretty Woman

mikey-madison-in-a-silky-dress-dancing-in-anora-movie-poster.jpeg

Anora's life takes a dramatic twist when she impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, catapulting her from the streets of Brooklyn to a world of opulence and scrutiny. As her new in-laws arrive with plans to dismantle the hasty union, Anora must navigate the cultural and social chasms between her past and her present. The film, directed by Sean Baker, masterfully blends sharp social commentary with heartfelt drama, painting a vivid picture of love, identity, and the unexpected consequences of a fairytale gone awry.

A smart and fresh modern twist on screwball comedies and Cinderella tales.
Mikey Madison is phenomenal, hilarious while also emotionally dominant.
Sean Baker continues to explore life on the margins in late-stage capitalism with humor and deep wells of compassion.

At the end of 1990's Pretty Woman , wealthy businessman Edward (Richard Gere) shows up at the shabby apartment which Vivian (Julia Roberts) shares with a friend and fellow sex worker. The dreamy synth of Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" swells as Richard sweeps Vivian off her feet and (presumably) away to a life free from worrying about how many tricks she needs to turn in order to make rent next month. People with that kind of money don't need to think about it too much. They also don't appreciate its value.

Related: Why Red Rocket Director Sean Baker is One of the Most Important Filmmakers Working Today

Ani (Madison) understands her value in terms of currency – the cost of a lap dance or an experience in a private room at the back of the strip club. She hustles through her days collecting paper from men eager to part with it and even easier to please before sleepwalking back to the Brooklyn apartment she shares with her sister. Every day is essentially the same until Ani meets Ivan (Mark Eidelstein), a wealthy young man asking for a stripper who speaks Russian, which Ani learned from her immigrant grandmother. The pair have an easy chemistry, but then again, Ani could have chemistry with anyone.

A Marriage of Mutually Assured Desires

Mikey Madison with Ivan in the movie Anora

Still, there's something different about Ivan, which is why Ani gives him a fully nude lap dance in private. "This is not allowed," she says as Ivan sits on his hands, "but I like you." And we're off to the races. It's not long before Ivan asks Ani to be his exclusive "horny girlfriend" for a week, likely his last in the U.S. before he goes to work for his dad in Russia. What follows is a whirlwind of all-nighters drenched in champagne and dusted in cocaine and an impromptu jaunt to Las Vegas on a private plane. When Ivan proposes to Ani after another night of partying and sex, it doesn't feel like much of a stretch when she says yes.

The Best Movies of 2024 including LaRoy, Texas, The Old Oak, In a Violent Nature, I Saw the TV Glow, and Evil Does Not Exist

Mid-Year Report: The Best Movies of 2024, So Far

Take a look at the greatest films released in 2024 so far to find some new movies you may not have heard of (after you're done disagreeing).

But Ivan's proposal and Ani's acceptance are motivated by distinctly different desires: For Ivan, marrying Ani is a middle finger to his mega-wealthy absentee parents; if he becomes an American citizen through marriage, Ivan naively believes he won't have to go back to Russia. For Ani, marrying Ivan is a one-way ticket out of a mundane working-class existence, trapped in a never-ending cycle of hustling from one paycheck to the next. When Ivan's parents get wind of the quickie wedding, they send their local proxy and his goons after the couple to force an annulment, kicking off a darkly comic caper that doesn't relent until the final frame .

Mikey Madison's Star-Making Turn

Most moviegoers are familiar with Mikey Madison from her supporting roles as unhinged sidekicks in Scream (2022) and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood . For those viewers, Madison's performance in Anora must feel revelatory, but if you watched the excellent FX drama Better Things , her work here, while invigorating, is hardly surprising. For five seasons, Madison played the eldest of Pamela Adlon's three daughters in an arc that saw her transform from a bratty teen into a surprisingly mature and insightful young adult.

As Anora 's eponymous protagonist, Madison expands the boundaries of her range in a performance that calls to mind Marisa Tomei's similarly star-making turn in My Cousin Vinny . Like Mona Lisa Vito, Ani is underestimated by the men in her orbit, most of whom perceive her as little more than an opportunistic sex worker.

Split image of rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, and Crazy Rich Asians

The 30 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time, Ranked

The romantic comedy is having a comeback, and with that in mind, here are a few of the best from the genre.

Ivan's parents send Toros (Karren Karagulian), a high-strung Armenian priest and trusted associate, and his goofy goons Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yuriy Borisov) to deal with Ani, who proves herself tougher and more astute than any of them bargained for when she starts throwing punches. Their scenes together comprise much of the film's uproarious third act, in which Ani and the trio of heavies venture across New York in search of Ivan.

To Have and Have Not

We spend most of Anora waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it does, it isn't the cliché third-act confessional of a teenage dirtbag who unintentionally falls for the woman from the wrong side of the social tracks; a woman who not only makes him want to be a better man, but shows him that becoming a better man is possible. Instead, it's all much more painfully honest. Perhaps there's a foolishness to Ani (and audiences) expecting reality to deliver the same fairy tale ending that Pretty Woman promised. However, Baker's compassionate, uncomplicated gaze never pities or judges Ani, whose greatest error was giving herself permission to hope despite, or possibly in spite of, her better judgment.

These Are the Best Movies About Capitalism

12 Best Movies About Capitalism

Many great films have explored economic systems, delving into the effects of capitalism with humor, horror, and everything in between.

The international marketing for Anora bills Baker's latest as a "Made in America love story." That description, which could apply to all of Baker's films, is far more apt than the American tagline ("Love is a hustle," so reductive and twee). The great lie of the American Dream is that anyone can make a name and a fortune for themselves if they try hard enough. What Ani pursues in her relationship with Ivan embodies the cynical reality for millions of people, many of whom – like Ani – would choose to embrace this exceptional fantasy if given the opportunity.

Of course, the vast majority of wealthy people inherit their fortunes through proximity and privilege, and nearly all of them have done so on the backs of people like Ani and Igor, who works for Ivan's family but still drives his own grandmother's old car. Like most of us, Ani and Igor can't reasonably hope to work their way into wealth; the best that capitalism can do for them is a winning Lotto ticket or its social equivalent – in Ani's case, meeting a defiant little princeling who punishes his elitist parents by marrying a sex worker from Brighton Beach.

Related: Best Sean Baker Movies, Ranked

While the possibility of a Pretty Woman finale is permanently punctured, the film doesn't end just yet; there's still a sense that we're holding our breath, waiting for the signal to exhale. This is when Anora delivers on all that pent-up empathy, with a moment of startling intimacy in which Ani finally removes her brassy armor. Catharsis is inherently hard-earned and rooted in heartbreak, but Baker shows us that there's something preternaturally hopeful about it too, a feeling that lingers pleasantly as the credits quietly roll.

From FilmNation Entertainment and Cre Film, NEON will release Anora in theaters on Oct. 18, 2024. It was most recently screened at Fantastic Fest .

Movie and TV Reviews

COMMENTS

Hanna
Hanna. List. NEW. Raised by her father (Eric Bana) in the Finnish wilderness, teenage Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has trained all her life to be the perfect assassin. Her father sends her on a mission ...
Home schooling can be a life-saver movie review (2011)
Roger Ebert. April 6, 2011. 4 min read. "Hanna" is a first-rate thriller about the drawbacks of home schooling. As it opens, a teenage girl is in the act of killing a deer with her bow and arrow, and then as she's gutting the carcass, a man sneaks up behind and says, "You're dead!". She engages in a fierce hand-to-hand battle with ...
Hanna (2011)
Hanna: Directed by Joe Wright. With Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Vicky Krieps, Cate Blanchett. A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.
'Hanna,' With Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan
Hanna. Directed by Joe Wright. Action, Drama, Thriller. PG-13. 1h 51m. By Manohla Dargis. April 7, 2011. In the last "Rocky" flick, a boxing guru tells the tired, sexagenarian fighter played ...
Hanna
Perhaps Hanna is a good film because the action is part of the narrative rather than the narrative being a part of the action. Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2021. Alyx Vesey Bitch ...
Hanna (film)
Hanna is a 2011 action thriller film directed by Joe Wright.The film stars Saoirse Ronan as the titular character, a girl raised in the wilderness of northern Finland by her father, an ex-CIA operative (), who trains her as an assassin. Cate Blanchett portrays a senior CIA agent who tries to track down and eliminate the girl and her father. The soundtrack was written by The Chemical Brothers.
Movie review: 'Hanna'
By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic. April 8, 2011 12 AM PT. "Hanna" starts off like a house afire but soon burns itself out. Blessed with considerable virtues, including a clever ...
Hanna: Movie Review
Hanna: Movie Review. Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana also star in the overly showy pursuit thriller from "Atonement" director Joe Wright. Moving ever further away from the high-lit reputability of ...
Movie Review
Movie Review - 'Hanna' - Atonement director Joe Wright reunites with Saoirse Ronan in an elegantly art-directed thriller about a teenager raised in ... The basic scenario is a bit Run Hanna Run ...
Hanna
Raised by her father, an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with ...
Hanna: Review of film starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett and Eric
The teenage actor Saoirse Ronan looks right at home in the Arctic. With her startling ice-blue eyes, pale skin and fleecy white-blonde hair she's like her own camouflage unit, nearly invisible as ...
Hanna Movie Review
August 11, 2018. age 14+. Top end of PG-13; slickness doesn't fully obfuscate brutality. The violence in this film can get realistically nasty, but it's worth pointing out that Hanna is an unambiguous hero who only fights to defend herself from threats (real or perceived, in one case played for laughs).
Hanna Review
Hanna, an inspired alchemy of hard-nosed action and dreamlike splendour, is an intentionally strange mix of movie staples: the steely spy thriller, the coming-of-age saga, and the superhero origin ...
Hanna
While Hanna is trained, in a sense, simply to defend herself, her father believes that the best defense is a good offense. So she kills without mercy. Taken into custody by government agents, she offs two soldiers in the process. Another four meet their end at her hands when she escapes.
Hanna Review
The mystery of who Hanna is and why the CIA is after her is engrossing, but so is the story of a sheltered little girl discovering what it's like to hear music for the first time or to kiss a boy ...
Movie Review: Hanna (2011)
And watching the oblivious Hanna interact with this corruption is just as intriguing as watching her single-handedly escape a high-security prison. Critical Movie Critic Rating: 4. Movie Review: Ninja (2009) Movie Review: Last Night (2010) Movie review of Hanna (2011) by The Critical Movie Critics.
'Hanna' Review: My So-Called Killing-Machine Life
From this point on, we're stuck in a sort of show-within-the-show — call it My So-Called Killing-Machine Life — that follows Hanna negotiating life as a normal young woman after years of ...
Review: Amazon's 'Hanna,' Genetically Modified for Streaming Video
March 29, 2019. "Hanna," released in 2011, was not a film that called out for a remake or a sequel. It had a singular style, and a delicacy — despite its frequent beatdowns and gun battles ...
Hanna: Movie and TV Series Review and Analysis
Things are looking Grimm. Although spy themed, Hanna is really a fairy tale. Hanna herself is a successor to any number of fairy tale heroines; Marissa is the wicked witch. Erik is the wise old king. The movie does lack a dashing prince to save the princess, that line of thinking being rather old-fashioned these days.
'Hanna' Review
Screen Rant's Kofi Outlaw Reviews Hanna. The classic princess fairytale is currently being thoroughly deconstructed and reassembled for the modern movie audience, and so far the results have been a mix of spot-on modern sensibility (Tangled) or, more often, a spotty patchwork of undercooked ideas (Alice In Wonderland, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch). ...
'Hanna' Review on Amazon Prime: Stream It or Skip It?
Erik takes the baby and escapes into the woods. Cut to sixteen years later. Heller and the now-teenaged girl, Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles), are living in a cave, hunting and gathering for food and ...
Hanna Movie Review
Hanna Movie Review. Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph gives you the low-down on Hanna starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett, directed by...
Hanna (2011)
W e meet Hanna (Saoirse Ronan—"Atonement," "The Lovely Bones"), who lives alone in the wilds of North Finland with her her widowed dad, an ex-CIA man. She's been homeschooled all her life, using an encyclopedia and a book of fairy tales. Her papa Erik is primarily teaching her how to fight, how to speak dozens of different languages, and how to survive.
'Lee' review: Winslet brings prickly photojournalist to life
Winslet, who produced "Lee" in addition to starring in it, has spent nine years developing the project, working with Antony Penrose, Miller's son and the author of the book "The Lives of ...
'The Garfield Movie' Netflix Streaming Movie Review ...
Purists will bellow BLASPHEMY at The Garfield Movie (now streaming on Netflix, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) while proponents of personal progress may hail it for pushing ...
Interview: After the Netflix of It All, Hannah Gadsby Gets Back to
The comedian Hannah Gadsby is not resting on their laurels. The boundary-pushing, now internationally renowned artist behind Nanette is back onstage in a new stand-up show titled Woof! at Abrons ...
Film Review: ANORA: Sean Baker Creates a Vision That Succeeds as the
Anora Review. Anora (2024) Film Review from the 62nd Annual New York Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Sean Baker and starring Mikey Madison, Mark
Anora Review
Movie and TV Reviews. Anora (2024) Sean Baker. Your changes have been saved. Email is sent. Email has already been sent. close. Please verify your email address. Send confirmation email. close.

Home schooling can be a life-saver

Roger Ebert

Directed by

I, The Executioner

The Apprentice

Daddy’s Head

Little Bites

House of Spoils

Memoir of a Snail

V/H/S/Beyond

Latest articles

Chaz Ebert, CEO of RogerEbert.com, Makes Directorial Debut with “Wellness Warrior”

Transcending Hell on Earth in Larisa Shepitko’s “The Ascent”

Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” Sadly Lives Up To Its Title

Fantastic Fest 2024: The Fall, The Birthday, Wake in Fright

Top cast 32

More like this

Did you know

User reviews 575

Saoirse Ronan Through the Years

Technical specs

Related news

More to explore

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Hanna Reviews

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

site categories

Todd McCarthy

Related Stories

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

'Hanna': The Spy (Kid) Who Came In From The Cold

Watch Clips

UK Edition Change

Thank you for registering

Hanna: Review of film starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Join our commenting forum

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Or browse by category:

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

Common Sense Selections for Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

Why Your Kid Should Read Banned Books

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Common Sense Media Review

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 15+?

Any Positive Content?

Violence & Scariness

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Products & Purchases

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Positive Messages

Positive Role Models

Where to Watch

Parent and Kid Reviews

Top end of PG-13; slickness doesn't fully obfuscate brutality

Is It Any Good?

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Movie Details

Did we miss something on diversity?

Suggest an Update

The Hunger Games, Book 1