Hanna is the story of a young girl, the film’s eponymous lead. The daughter of a retired spy, she has spent her young life in the forest, training to take on the woman she has been told wants her dead. As the story begins, Hanna confronts her father and tells him that life in the forest is not enough, that she is ready to face the world and the challenges it brings. So begins a taut thriller as she is captured by government agents, escapes from a facility beneath the Moroccan desert and fights to survive and meet up again with her father.

During the course of her adventures, the audience slowly discovers the truth of Hanna and her father’s background and why they were hiding away in the first place. Unfortunately, the whole thing is almost utterly disposable, some rubbish about a rogue agent, or perhaps two, and strange experiments. Every time you stop to think about the piece of plot that’s just been revealed, you realise there’s no point because there is no deeper meaning, just enough poorly crafted back-story to get the film from one location to the next.

Saoirse Ronan is magnetic and it is her performance that saves Hanna, creating a lead character that carefully balances otherworldly mystique and the innocence of a sheltered youth. Eric Bana is also serviceable, but the remainder of the cast is pushed so far into caricature that even normally solid actors come away poorly. Cate Blanchett’s performance is up there with Indiana Jones as the worst of her career, but she is given so little to play with that it’s hard to imagine what else she could have done. Maybe if she’d been given a fluffy white cat to stroke. Or any kind of motivation for her actions. You know, one or the other.

There’s an attempt in the pacing and the cinematography to make a very European style of thriller, slow, impactful and thoughtful. It looks very pretty and it’s a valiant attempt by the director (Joe Wright) to salvage Hanna, but in the face of the utterly trite thriller aspects of the plot it feels strangely disconnected. When the film pauses for breath and inspects Hanna as a person, then everything comes together and it picks up immensely. Everything clicks, particularly in Hanna’s interaction with the family of hippies that she befriends. Again, these characters are pushed so far into caricature that it’s distracting, but Ronan is captivating enough to sustain these moments and keep the viewer interested.

The use of sound is worth particular note throughout the film, with silence and soundtrack both used impressively, adding a real sense of energy to the action where appropriate. There’s some nice touches as well, such as when Hanna encounters a few modern conveniences for the first time (electric kettle, fluorescent light, television) and is overwhelmed by the combined sound. It’s a well handled scene, that helps build a sense of the character’s previous isolation. Although, when you remember that the character has just walked through the middle of a busy and loud Moroccan city to get to the room she is in, it does feel a touch contrived.

A true mixed bag, Hanna is a largely enjoyable movie, saved by a magnetic lead performance, but its flaws are myriad and hard to ignore. It’s a real shame too, because there is a far better movie hiding in there somewhere.

- Sky Kirkham