‘Hanna” doesn’t go wrong immediately. It takes at least 2½ minutes, when we see Saoirse Ronan — the vaguely extraterrestrial sprite of “Atonement” and “The Lovely Bones” — in a kickboxing fight with Eric Bana, whom she knocks on his bottom.
C’mon, Eric: You played Chopper, Hector and the Hulk. Have a little more self-respect than to pretend that it would be an even match between you and a wee girl built like a tulip.
VIDEO: SAOIRSE RONAN TALKS WITH POPWRAP
Bana’s character, a rogue ex-CIA agent, and his daughter (Ronan) are training to be superkillers in the Finnish woods so they can exact revenge against the spy who killed the girl’s mom: Cate Blanchett. Do we really need not one but two overcoached porcelain ice maidens? Why didn’t the filmmakers just throw Tilda Swinton in there, too, and make it a party of milky, high-strung actingbots?
This J.V. “Salt” is effective only for a few minutes at a time, in some occasionally ripping action scenes set to a vivid Chemical Brothers score. Hanna is forever snapping necks, firing arrows and sprinting (with her palms open flat, giving her an Ace Ventura aspect) away from baddies like Marissa and her henchman (Tom Hollander), a degenerate fop in tennis whites who ponces around attempting to be multilingually sinister. “Es ist Der Sandman!” he tells a little kid, non-scarily. Hollander thinks his performance is just this side of camp, but he is wrong.
There is a reason you don’t see Saoirse Ronan types in the Ultimate Fighting Championships. Yet it’s the think-think, not the bang-bang, that makes a superspy movie, and Hanna is too superhuman to be interesting. Her appeal is not increased by her tangle of blond hair, nor her dim dialogue, a monotone babble of useless trivia her dad pumped into her. “I live in Leipzig, population zero point seven million peoples,” she blurts, trying to blend in.
Meanwhile, Bana wipes out anonymous assassins who make the mistake of lining up to present their asses for kicking instead of just shooting him. (When bullets finally do fly in the final five minutes, you’ll wonder: Was there some kind of worldwide ammo shortage until this point?)
I couldn’t even figure out who “Hanna” is supposed to be for. Sentence you never hear at Sigma House: “Bro, we have to see the new Saoirse Ronan action flick.” As for girls — do they really fantasize about ripping the hearts out of deer? No, “Hanna” exists purely so the actors and director can amuse themselves. Which is why it’s about as interesting as a home movie.
Its humorless lead actresses are blown away by the mischievous energy of teen actress Jessica Barden, who steals the show (as she did in last year’s “Tamara Drewe”) playing a friend Hanna picks up on the road.
Barden gives the film some bright hints of the real world. When she declares that everything Hanna does is completely “mental,” it’s a nice reminder that the trained killer would probably curl weeping into a fetal position if she had to deal with a really dicey situation, like high school.