To Watch Hanna or Not? That is the Question..

In this movie, starring Saoirse Ronan (also from Atonement and The Lovely Bones), Hanna Heller is a German girl that lives in the woods with her father, Erik (played by Eric Bana). They are seemingly isolated from the rest of society, and provide for themselves by living off the land that surrounds them - by hunting and gathering mostly. Since the age of 2, Hanna has been trained by Erik to be multilingual and an assassin.

However, Hanna has never learned about technology - lights, computers etc. - as part of her training mostly because of her isolation. Quite early in the movie, Erik tells her that she's ready and provides her with a transmitter that will broadcast her location to the CIA and the agent that is on the case - Marissa - played by Cate Blanchett. And so starts a series of events that takes Hanna to various places around the world in search of herself and her story.

Saoirse Ronan, who played Briony in "Atonement," is a beautiful and stunningly talented actress and that carries over into this role. Her talent shines through most of the time, even when the movie lost all sort of draw or believability for me. Her performance remains mesmerizing. As the movie progresses, she is believable in her role as a wild child who is experiencing the outside world for the first time and Bana, who is a blah actor at best, shows decent ability in acting concerned about the welfare of his daughter. I just felt that every character that I met and every situation that they were in became terribly predictable. There were no unexpected twists or turns. The action scenes were so-so. The plot, heavy handed and flat for the most part.

And poor, poor, poor Blanchett - who performs masterfully in so many other films. She too is a stereotype and not even a good one. ::sigh:: This movie could have been so much more but it wasn't and should therefore be left for another day.