Raised by her father, an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity. - skip ad - Genres: Drama and Thriller Running Time: 1 hr. 51 min. Release Date: April 8th, 2011 (wide) MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sexual material and language. Distributor: Focus Features Cast And Credits Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams Directed by: Joe Wright Produced by: Leslie Holleran, Marty Adelstein, Scott Nemes

In the last “Rocky” flick, a boxing guru tells the tired, sexagenarian fighter played by the tired, middle-aged Sylvester Stallone that he’s a wreck, with arthritis in his neck and calcium deposits in his joints. Rocky has to get in shape if he wants to ascend the stairs of victory again, so the trainer recommends that they employ “good old-fashioned blunt force trauma” and “start building some hurtin’ bombs!” The spookily pale and pretty underage killing machine in “Hanna” played by Saoirse Ronan, then 16, doesn’t have a couple of bombs that hurt: she has a veritable nuclear arsenal of pain at her quick, kinetic disposal.



In most fight stories there’s usually a scene or two in which the hero, and sometimes heroine, prepares for battle. In silence or to pounding beats, the combatants train and practice as the camera all but licks their flexing muscles and rivulets of sweat. In these ritualistic preambles, they ready for their fights in much the same fashion, whether they’re called Achilles or Buffy, Secretariat or Hanna: their bodies are transformed into the first field of war. Part of what makes “Hanna” weird and entertaining as well as food if not nourishment for thought, is that the body looks so young: Not 12, but not 16, either, which adds an outré touch to the sight of Hanna taking down a deer and soon after, a human being.

“Hanna,” energetically and at times hyperactively directed by Joe Wright, is about a girl raised not by wolves but the next best thing: a bearded and muscled Eric Bana draped in animal skins. He’s the resident mystery man, Erik, a warrior of some type who for initially unknown reasons lives with his daughter, Hanna, in rugged isolation in northern Finland. She’s the bigger puzzle. When the movie opens Hanna is tracking a deer through the snow, running fast, then faster with a quiver and bow. “I just missed your heart,” she tells the deer after downing it with an arrow. She then takes a gun from beneath her crazy-quilt furs and shoots it dead, putting an end to its misery and setting the plot in strange motion.

It gets self-consciously odder, agreeably and divertingly so. The screenplay by Seth Lochhead and David Farr is itself a patchwork of action-movie themes â€" including storm-trooping soldiers in black helicopters and an intelligence agency with a covert program â€" that have been recombined along Grimm Brothers story lines. And so, after the once upon a Finland time, Hanna and Erik part ways, embarking on an intrigue involving a C.I.A. operative named Marissa Wiegler and played with witty menace by Cate Blanchett. She isn’t the fairest in the land, but she seems the maddest and like the queen in “Snow White” sets her huntsmen (two skinheads and their requisite mincing boss) on Hanna, who pursues Marissa in turn. Round and round they go and where they stop, well, you probably know.

In familiar stories getting there is all or much of the fun. To those action-movie ends, Mr. Wright keeps the narrative in overdrive â€" the gangbuster opening sets the bar almost too high â€" even as he makes room for quieter times, as when Hanna meets a clan of nondwarfs. This friendly brood (Olivia Williams plays the hippy, not dippy mom), which Hanna meets in Morocco during an abrupt trip to the desert, envelop her in warmth, showing her what family happiness looks like. (She seems to have been on an emotional starvation diet.) The scenes with the family are inviting and a touch eccentric, especially in the almost invasive close-up shots of Hanna’s downy face when she kisses another girl (Jessica Barden).

Mr. Wright has a pair of period movies on his résumé, “Pride & Prejudice” and the overstuffed “Atonement.” He can be a wild overshooter. He polishes his images to a high gloss, an unfortunate choice for the World War II killing fields in “Atonement” and the skid row in “The Soloist,” another of his films. No matter his cinematographer (in this case, Alwin Küchler), Mr. Wright likes to toss the camera around like a coked-up cheerleader or a director who wants you to remember that it’s all about him. He doesn’t bring much personality to his work or have an obvious signature, save for a penchant for roving cameras and his appreciation of Ms. Ronan, one difference being that in this movie his cinematographic restlessness works for the story.

In the end there might not be much to this tale other than titillation, but there’s plenty to be said for Ms. Ronan, who was the best thing about “Atonement” and holds her ground against forceful screen presences like Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Bana. Ms. Ronan is an otherworldly beauty with a gift for stillness and has alabaster skin that, depending on how it’s lighted, can look creamily alive or morbidly white. In “Hanna” she enters with a face nearly as blank as paper and devoid of obvious emotion, her eerie, translucent blue eyes here transformed into opaque pools.

You assume or really just hope that those eyes will reveal exciting new depths or a secret of character. That they don’t reveal much is part of the big surprise as well as a liability in a movie that is by turns startling and generic, subtle and blunt, and consistently keeps you in its grip if not its heart.