Hanna is an exciting movie that's fun while it's happening but leaves you wishing it had more meat to it. The plot was painfully simple. I think the story needed more conflict or different characters or raining frogs at the end; some tasty side dish to accompany the main course of cool action sequences and delicious visuals we are being fed. There's some great things in Hanna, but story details are not one of them. See this film for the imaginative visuals, heart-pounding psychedelic music from The Chemical Brothers, and fascinating performances by the actors, but not to be stimulated intellectually.

Director Joe Wright starts this film off quite seriously in a cabin hidden away in a frozen forest. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan: Atonement, The Lovely Bones) has been living out here her whole life while her father Erik (Eric Bana) is preparing her for her inevitable entry into the world. This part of the film feels like the director's other serious works: Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, The Soloist. Once Hanna is captured by the CIA, and eventually escapes, the film takes a very dream-like turn while also turning up a kick-ass feeling (cue The Chemical Brothers.) It's my impression that the director wanted to do something a bit different from what he's used to.

While escaping from her captors, Hanna is running through a tunnel with strobe lights flashing (mimicking an electrical failure I suppose.) This represents her traveling into another realm through a proverbial rabbit hole. All she knows about the real world she was taught from text books by her father. He was never much for fantasy or dreaming, but Hanna had a book of Grim's Fairy Tales that she cherished. To her the real world becomes a mix of those two concepts: the sterile scientific truth of an encyclopedia and the strange fantastical land of fairy tales. The director does a good job of portraying ordinary things in our modern world as both frightening for her while remaining mundane for us.

The best thing in this film was a five or so minute sequence meant to appear as one continuous shot (I'm sure there were a few cuts in it, but with computer effects nowadays it's getting hard to tell.) The seamless shot starts at an airport, goes out to the street, and then down into a subway station where Eric Bana kicks some serious ass. He's punching and kicking in a beautiful ballet of carnage (similar to A History of Violence or the original Bourne Identity) with some computer aided fast moves and cut-out frames to make it look like he's hitting people harder than anyone has ever hit people before. It's super cool and makes the film worth the ticket price for me.

As far as action movies go Hanna is very entertaining and doesn't treat the audience like an idiot. This isn't Vin Diesel's xXx or some other horrible mindless Hollywood dribble where explosions count as characters, and alternately it's not like Se7en where amidst the action is a deep and interesting story unfolding. None of the characters in Hanna are easy to relate to, making it hard to stay invested. Luckily it's visually interesting enough to keep you watching. Hanna is simple... but she grew up in a forest so what did you expect?

3.5 Stars (out of 5)