Goodbye, Emerald Forest... Hello, Hanna!

This is what I get for not staying on top of my movie load. Anyway, greetings, my ten followers! I'm just on my way out the door, but before I go, a word or two about the new thriller Hanna. It is of course equal parts of everything we expect out of our movies these days, and a few moments we don't... but I tend to lean towards the 'shame on you' column this time. Okay, let's dig into the plot now... SPOILER ALERT... just like Hanna dug into that giant pile of steaming caribou intestines. The Empire Strikes Back, eat your heart out! Might as well get my harshest observation out of the way first. Just as Hancock is a meditation on Superman, Hanna of course owes quite a lot to the X-Men backstory, but doesn't push into R territory like Cronenberg's Videodrome.
The actors and the acting are all top notch, of course. This may be the one role that Saoirse Ronan was born to play... actually, that's not true. She's damn good in everything she does. But ultimately it's as Itaril in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that she... WHAAA?!! Wha happan? Apparently that's the one role they cannot abide, or maybe some internet prankster came up with that one.
But back to the nitpicking. The precise moment that the film's credibility was lost on me is when Hanna grabs on to the bottom of the moving tank. I'm sure it's all part of her X-Men-type powers, but still. As if kids her age aren't already self-conscious enough. But even Hanna can't exist alone in this world for long. Soon enough she falls in with a delightful family of quirky best friends, but Hanna bonds most closely with the girl her age, the cute and precocious Sophie. The way their relationship culminates in the platonic kiss is handled as sweetly and as matter-of-factly as possible, but the South still doesn't care, and I'll bet it made even dirty ol' Phil Kaufman blush a bit. And was I the only one that thought of the Mystery Men's trek out to Tom Waits' carnival in the desert when Hanna makes her pilgrimage to the Grimm house in Germany? I thought so, but I wanted to bring it up anyway.
Well, I guess that's about it. Oh, right, I forgot... a brief shout out to the leader of the bad guys, Tom Hollander. I'm pretty sure he was channeling the spirit of Thomas Lennon for this one. People get ready for the headache-inducing sequel.

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-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan