Hanna

Hanna (2011) was sold as an action film but is actually a fairy tale, and it makes no secret of it. Hanna is sixteen and was raised in the forests of Finland. Her father is a former CIA officer who has trained her since birth for one purpose. She has never seen a city, never seen electric light, never heard music. She knows the world from an encyclopaedia she memorised. When she is sent into Europe the real subject surfaces, and it is not the fight scenes. It is a child seeing a ceiling light for the first time, hearing a television for the first time, making a friend for the first time. Joe Wright gives those scenes more room than the action. The references to the Brothers Grimm are open. One section takes place in an actual fairy tale park, and the villain's stage entrance is through the mouth of a wolf. The score is by the Chemical Brothers and it sets the rhythm of the film. Some of the chases are cut almost like music videos, which is a deliberate choice. Wright had until then made Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, which is to say costumed literary adaptations. Nobody expected this turn. Saoirse Ronan carries the film and was sixteen at the time. It runs 111 minutes. Good for: action, fairy tale structure, and genre hybrids. Less good for: there is violence and a child at the centre of it, and the plot does not reward anyone looking for logic.