Yes it has been a while. How long has it been? 1... 2 weeks... OK so a couple of years have gone by since my last review and I would like to be able say that up until now no film has truly compelled me to put fingers to keyboard and let flowery metaphor after metaphor erupt from my pretentious "mindhole" like a flamboyant volcanic thesaurus. Sadly however that is not the case. My distinct lack of activity has been down to a combination of work, sadly taking priority over a film blog vanity project, combined with my own heroic laziness(mostly the second one). But I'm back and will hopefully be supplying you, all two and a half of my loyal followers, with almost weekly reviews providing my cramped schedule of angry birds and googling my own name allows... But enough introduction, on with the review!
"HANNA", the 4th feature film of Joe Wright's impressive career, is similarly to its protagonist and namesake entirely unexpected, FREAKIN INCREDIBLE! and... um... strangely attractive. Ok so maybe I'm stretching the comparison between the film itself and its central anti-heroine a little far but it doesn't change the fact that this remains, in my humble blogger opinion, easily the greatest achievement of Mr Wrights up till now stellar, but samey career. HANNA is quite frankly pure unadulterated, often disturbing fun. It's clear from the opening, in which an Arctic based Hanna (Ronan)shoots a deer in the face before having a brutal fist fight with her animal skin clad father figure, that this is not going to be another awkward Victorian flirting and drawing room bitch fest that some may have come to expect from Wright, director of "Atonement" and "Pride and Prejudice".
The film focuses on, surprise surprise, Hanna a teenage assassin and her unending pursuit for revenge for the brutal death of her mother. HANNA's relentless, asthma inducing pace is introduced at the beginning and doesn't slow throughout somehow managing to combine an array of face meltingly awesome fight and chase montages with tender at times revelatory character development. This is helped in no small part by Ronan's startlingly effective as well as convincing portrayal of a teenage assassin stuck between being a child and a robot like killing machine with a thing for pointy objects and turning people into human kebabs. In fact its unfair to give all the acting credit to Ronan, however great she was and however huge my nerd crush for her is credit must go to pretty much every member of the cast each giving standout performances and all worthy of a cavalcade of unnecessarily elaborate adjectives to describe their individual character portrayal, with a personal favorite being the heroically creepy Isaacs or "Sandman" played by the ever reliable and in this case eye opening Tom Hollander, lets just say I wont be getting much sleep tonight. However the two greatest aspects of "HANNA" as a whole were more technically focused, these being the cinematography as well as the shot composition making nearly every shot simply look like it should be hanging in an art gallery. HANNA's visuals truly stick in your mind long after you've switched off your TV and, in my case, gone foetul on the floor from sheer sensory overload. The second of these feats of technical wizardry is of course the mind blendingly, seizure inducingly glorious Chemical Brothers soundtrack helping to give each scene its setting, emotional charge and drive as well as beating half of your senses into bloody submission, causing some serious emotional numbness for sometime after viewing. Just listening to the soundtrack now I'm having to intersperse it with "The Archers" omnibus just to balance out adrenaline levels.
Despite a slightly lazily un-concluded family side story and a lack of any kind of moral amongst the continuous waves of stylized violence this is one of the most cohesive, exciting and technically dazzling thrillers I've seen in a very long time.
Maybe its cause it's my first review in a while or the fact that my brain was turned into ready break by the relentless score but I'm feeling generous 8/10!
 |
| Eskimos didn't take kindly to cameras |
Despite a slightly lazily un-concluded family side story and a lack of any kind of moral amongst the continuous waves of stylized violence this is one of the most cohesive, exciting and technically dazzling thrillers I've seen in a very long time.
Maybe its cause it's my first review in a while or the fact that my brain was turned into ready break by the relentless score but I'm feeling generous 8/10!
Posts
