Hanna

Last night being the 3rd Saturday of the Month meant it was Move Night for the wife and I. We have always been pretty good about enjoying being parents, but still making 'Us' time.  The Greater Tri-Cities YMCA offers something they call Parents Night Out on the third Saturday of every month.  Bring your kids down to one of the local elementary schools, and drop them off from 6-10pm.  They get to play with other kids in a supervised environment, and parents get away.  Cost for the 4 hours is 12 bucks a kid, which is much less than I pay when we use to get in home baby-sitters.

A nice thing about this is that our kids after being cooped up in the apartment, our kids are just as excited to go run around and be crazy as we are to drop them off. 

Usually, this 4 hour time frame is just enough to visit a store or two and see a movie.  We tried doing dinner and move once, but it was awfully close on time.  One negative over a home baby-sitter is you can't just call and say you are running a bit late.

Originally, I had thought that this Movie Night was going to be all about 'Sucker Punch'...but it is already out of the theaters around here.  Bummer.  'Atlas Shrugged' would have required driving two hours to Spokane, which wouldn't have left much time for a movie, so we settled on 'Hanna', which looked like an interesting movie.  And it was.

I want to say it was pretty standard suspense, chase, find the answers type fare...with the exception being it wasn't Matt Damon or Jason Statham doing the butt-kicking, it but a 16-year old girl, played very well by Saoirse Ronan, who is also in 'Atonement' for which she recieved a Golden Globe and Oscar Nomination, and 'The Lovely Bones' for which she should have been nominated.  That's a pretty steep career trajectory for someone who isn't even 17 yet.  Oh...and she is rumored to have a role in The Hobbit.  Sky's the limit.

Hanna is a 16-year old girl being raised 'tough love' style by Eric Bana in Northern Finland.  Totally isolated from the outside world, we learn that Eric's character is training her for...something.  Specifically, she is being crafted as a tool for his revenge.  Eric Bana is a fine actor, and is much more menacing in this role than in 'Munich'.

It doesn't take long to find out that the target of his revenge is Marissa Viegler, played by Cate Blanchett, who is channeling an early X-files Dana Anderson, if Scully had been a cold-hearted killer.  She is also well cast, in that I can not picture anyone else playing that part after seeing her do it.  We know Marissa is the bad guy because she works for the CIA(mean old American's) and burns files...oh, and brushes her teeth too much.

The ending is abrupt, and not an overly Hollywood-ized Happy Ending. 

Don't want to give too much of the plot away...it's a good movie, and with the acting and action, I would probably give it 4 stars out of 5...except for one scene.  About 25% of the way into the movie, there is an action sequence where it feels like you have fallen into a techno dance club for about 5 minutes...too much base, too much strobing of lights on the screen.  My wife actually had to look away, because she said it was making her nauseous.  That scene alone knocks it down to 3.75 out of 5 stars.

It is worth seeing.