Review: Hanna

Focus Features

Right off the bat there's going to be one thing that divides the audience on 'Hanna', the new action/thriller from director Joe Wright ('Pride & Prejudice', 'Atonement'): how smart of a thriller are you expecting? What even makes a thriller 'smart'? When I think of a 'smart' thriller the first movie that pops into my mind is 'Memento.' 'Memento' is complex and confusing from the beginning, and slowly pieces fall into place and start to make sense. Not to mention the intensity is kept at a fairly good rate throughout the entire film. So, what approach does 'Hanna' take to building/maintaining intensity and establishing the mysterious/complex aspect that is often (if not always) part of 'action thrillers'?

'Hanna' is set up as a sort of chase scenario from the beginning. Once young Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) decides she has received enough training from her father (Eric Bana) and is 'ready' she sets off a beacon that alerts Marissa Viegler (Cate Blanchett), a CIA agent, to the duo's location in the middle of the woods somewhere. Right away, the focus of the film is on why was Erik Heller (Bana) training his daughter to kill Marissa and why does she, in turn, want to kill the two of them? What's more, there's obviously something different about Hanna. Mainly that she's a highly skilled killer who is a CHILD.

Review: Source Code

Summit Entertainment

With the release of 'Moon' in 2009 I not only gained much more respect for Sam Rockwell as an actor, but also for the film's director, Duncan Jones. 'Moon' proved that Jones has a knack for handling both the tension and progression of stories; especially in the sci-fi genre. Within this genre it's so easy to let the effects, action, and spectacle take over and you lose any sort of connection to the audience and the characters as human beings. It's easy to understand since sci-fi mainly revolves around the science (duh), technology, and fascination with the undiscovered (often UNdiscoverable) elements of the galaxy and the limits of human life and perception. Thanks partly to Rockwell's strong performance as Sam in 'Moon', Jones was able to keep the focus trained on Sam as a human being. The emptiness and seclusion of Sam's position and predicament revealed towards the end only succeeds to emphasize his character and not the 'sci-fi' elements. It makes for a very fascinating movie visually but also emotionally.

So has Jones done it again with 'Source Code', the new sci-fi thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal? I'd say he has. While the overall tone of the film is quite different from 'Moon', it succeeds on multiple levels of tension, twists, and most importantly, character development.