Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan

"Hanna" presents the problem of the well-made diversion that is, at its core, repellent.

It is not because of who's on screen.

In director Joe Wright's film, Saoirse Ronan sets her piercing gaze on the role of the teenage daughter of a trained CIA assassin, played by Eric Bana. The story begins in snowy northern Finland where father, rugged but humane, schools his little girl in all manner of brutal combat and survival tactics.

Dad's former supervisor, a slab of granite-like resolve and Texas-twanged nastiness portrayed by Cate Blanchett (more on this performance later), wants her rogue agent brought in from the cold. She also has plans for the girl, who has been genetically engineered to follow a bloody path indeed.

Working from a script by Seth Lochhead and David Farr, which only feels as if it came from an inferior graphic novel, "Hanna" darts around the planet from the Arctic Circle to Morocco to insidiously gray Hamburg and Berlin. In Morocco, Hanna falls in with a family of four that appears to be on permanent vacation, their ancient motorbus a relic of the hippie era. Olivia Williams plays the mother; she's warm and appealing enough to make you wish the movie were about her.

Director Wright and his cinematographer, Alwin Kuchler, have a dreamy set of geographical and tonal contrasts with which to work. This is a fairy tale -- we'd get that, even if Hanna's childhood copy of Grimm fairy tales weren't part of the narrative. It's not meant to be real, only a relatively asexual variation on the glossy slaughter games of "La Femme Nikita."

In both "Atonement" and his version of "Pride & Prejudice," Wright developed an affinity for investigating complicated female roles and encouraging his actresses in the same direction. I liked both literary adaptations; Wright's penchant for tricky, arguably show-offy tracking shots has its detractors, but at least he's interested in making the camera move and not leaving everything to the editing stage. This film's best scene, which starts with the camera (i.e., the audience) trailing Bana as he walks down to a train platform and ends with several deceased assailants, is brought off in an apparent single take. The action satisfies, like precious little else in "Hanna."

Amid an international house of flat-as-a-pancake characters, Blanchett is charged with embodying the conspicuous American emblem of villainy. Looking eerily like a mannequin edition of herself, the actress tries to have some referential fun, adding a dash of George W. Bush here and a smidge of Hillary Clinton there. But her material is beyond thin. Just as Blanchett faded into the waxworks of the last "Indiana Jones" picture, her presence here is at once unmistakable and unmistakably limited. As with the recent "Kick-Ass," the kick we're supposed to be getting in "Hanna" comes from an innocent but deadly under-ager opening up can after can of whoop-ass. Ronan holds the screen. But for all its globe-trotting, the movie never goes anywhere.

 

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"Hanna" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, some sexual material and language).

Running time: 1:51.

Cast: Saoirse Ronan (Hanna); Eric Bana (Erik); Cate Blanchett (Marissa); Tom Hollander (Isaacs); Jessica Barden (Sophie); Olivia Williams (Rachel); Jason Flemyng (Sebastian).

Credits: Directed by Joe Wright; written by Seth Lochhead and David Farr; produced by Leslie Holleran, Marty Adelstein and Scott Nemes. A Focus Features release.

 

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