Hanna

Hanna is a refreshingly character-driven take on the spy thriller and the "girls kick ass" action movie. Saoirse Ronan shines in the title role, as a teenager raised in a frozen wilderness, trained to fight by her father, Erik (Eric Bana). When Hanna is ready to leave home, it's with a purpose, as her father has tasked her with murdering a high-level CIA operative, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). Things don't go quite as planned, and Marissa sets a badly dressed thug, Isaacs (a creepy Tom Hollander), on the girl's tail. Hanna travels to a Berlin rendezvous with Erik, assisted by a British couple (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) with a teen daughter, Sophie (Jessica Barden). Joe Wright's film has a certain similarity to Black Swan, taking genre tropes and twisting them into a high-octane modern-day fairy tale that teeters on the brink of absurdity. Early on, Hanna escapes from a state-of-the-art CIA facility, an action setpiece featuring rapidly cut fight sequences, a spinning camera, strobing lights, and the Chemical Brothers' propulsive score. The spectacle is a bit overwhelming, but Wright wisely slows things down thereafter to focus on this lethal, otherworldly creature's interactions with conventional society. The real beauty of the film is that Hanna—particularly in her budding friendship with Sophie—is a believable teenage girl.