Something to watch tonight: Thursday 16 January
Hanna (Wright, 2011)
Firstly, yet another apology for missing an update yesterday. I got a late offer to record and edit At the Summer Movies in-house with an engineer at RNZ rather than fumbling around in the home studio so I thought I should take it. You can listen to the results here. I’ve been pretty happy with how the homemade versions have come out but it’s always better to have someone else in the room with you.
Joe Wright’s Hanna was a modest hit back in 2011 – and my original review wavered a little bit – but I’m fonder of it now, especially since the Prime Video TV adaptation came out in 2019 to remind me. I seem to recall enjoying that series, too, but we didn’t go back for seasons two and three and I can’t remember why.
Here’s my review of the original film from the Capital Times:
Joe Wright’s globe-trotting thriller Hanna is properly puzzling. After due consideration I think I like it but I can imagine some viewers finding the abrupt shifts in tone and the unexpected (and arguably unearned) comedic moments too distracting. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan from The Lovely Bones) is a teenage girl, living in a remote cabin somewhere in the Arctic Circle with dad Eric Bana. He’s a former spook who somehow escaped when dodgy CIA operative Cate Blanchett turned on him when Hanna was just a toddler.
Ever since then he’s been plotting his revenge and Hanna is to be the instrument of it. She’s a killing machine, trained for one purpose and once unleashed she commences her mission with commendable single-mindedness. Except the outside world surprises her, and the people she meets (the ones not trying to kill her, at least) suggest her father has missed out a lot about the positive side of human nature and what it feels like to be a teenager.
So, the film alternates between well-constructed violent action set-pieces (featuring an often punishingly loud soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers) and the coming-of-age character stuff. The question then becomes which strand of the story will decide the character’s fate. There’s a lot to enjoy in Hanna, not least Wright’s intelligent use of unusual locations, but it ultimately feels like an opportunity missed. At the beginning (and the end) Hanna says to a character she’s just shot, “I just missed your heart” and that goes for the film as a whole too, I think.
Also in the Capital Times that week: Asif Kapadia’s masterful documentary Senna (which will be a recommendation here soon as it, too, is now on local Netflix), the 25th anniversary reissue of Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale, Final Destination 5 and Italian thriller The Double Hour.
Where to watch Hanna
Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix
Australia: Streaming on Netflix and Binge
Canada: Streaming on Netflix and Hollywood On Demand
Ireland & UK: Streaming on Prime Video and Sky
India: Streaming on Netflix
USA: Digital rental
Further reading
Auckland subscriber JG has his own newsletter which is one of my Substack recommendations.
On Tuesday he made a positive contribution to the discussion of international affairs by making a credible case that Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland can be laid at the door of actor Gerard Butler (yet another thing we can blame him for):
In Trump’s tiny, fetid brain, Hollywood fiction had surely become documentary truth. Or at least Fox News truth because the thought of Trump watching a documentary (unless it is about him) is a bridge too far.
In this way Donald Trump came to believe that Gerard Butler was God, speaking to him through a Scottish action movie star.
The first real example of Trump’s obsession with Gerard Butler came in 2019, when he created Space Force, saying that: "Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we're leading, but we're not leading by enough. But very shortly we'll be leading by a lot."
Space Force was created a mere two years after the 2017 Gerard Butler film Geostorm, which is about a space-based satellite defence system. A space force.
You should read the whole thing as it’s an interesting argument and one I hope was prompted by my review of Den of Thieves here on Monday.