ANALYSIS:

Erik Heller (Eric Bana) raises and trains his daughter Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) to be the perfect assassin and to kill Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), the evil CIA witch that killed her mother and wants Erik dead.   He raised her in the wild snowy forests of Finland below the Arctic Circle.  She has old pictures of her mother and a copy of the Grimm Fairy Tales (in German) to keep her company at night.   Erik tells her one day that she can flick a switch to activate a signal box and Wiegler will come for her.  He also warns her that there is no turning back once she does it.   She flips the switch and the CIA sends special ops soldiers to retrieve her.  She ends up in an underground facility in Morocco which she escapes leaving a high body count in her wake.

Hanna makes friends with a bratty teenage girl who is on a trip with her bohemian parents and her little brother.   Hanna also discovers so much about the world like TV and electricity.   A passport is a foreign concept to her when she is presented with one in a scene. Her father has sent Hanna on a mission to kill Wiegler (and meet him at the house of the Grim Fairy Tales in Berlin) which goes wrong and Wiegler is on a mission to track both Hanna and Erik down.   She recruits a creepy German club owner and his two goons to find Hanna while Wiegler focuses CIA assets on Erik.

HANNA is a Grimm Fairy tale re-imagined as a modern action thriller with a techno score by the Chemical Brothers.   Director Joe Wright crafts a movie through visuals and sounds as we witness the world different from what Hanna imagined (since she only knows stuff through books and what survival and killing skills her father taught her).   HANNA is a ride that starts slow before kicking into high gear when she is thrown into the world.   Cate Blanchette is the evil witch, a role which she delights in playing.   The film does belong to the visuals and sounds along with the performance of Saoirse Ronan which is contained and sometimes even explosive.   The various locations wrap you up more in this surreal tale which happens to be one of my favorite films of this year (along with PAUL).   Also the movie doesn't overstay it's end (and I guessed what the last shot of the film before credits would be).

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The alternate ending doesn't add anything- it is like an epilogue of sorts that is better left out of the final film.   The deleted scenes prove editing can tighten up a film and the three cut scenes show three scenes not needed in the final cut because they either slow it down or other scenes give that info more effectively.

ANATOMY OF A SCENE: THE ESCAPE FROM CAMP G-   Joe Wright takes you through the escape scene and talks the viewer through it .

Also included on the disc is the feature audio commentary with Director Joe Wright.

The Blu-ray features additional featurette that focus on the training Saorise Ronan went through for this film, filming the various locations, and the music of the Chemical Brothers.

FINAL ANALYSIS:   HANNA is one of my favorite films of 2011.   It is an action film done like RUN LOLA RUN mixed with the fairy tale and the spy film genres.    I do wish the DVD had more extras, but the blu-ray does have some nice additional extras.

this DVD review is (c)9-11-2011 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com