Hanna

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

I just missed your heart.

Hanna is a 2011 action-thriller (with Speculative Fiction elements) starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett, reuniting Ronan with Atonement director Joe Wright.

Hanna (Ronan) is a teenage girl brought up in the frozen wastes of Finland by her father Erik (Bana) who has been training her to be the perfect assassin. On a mission from her father, Hanna treks across Europe towards an uncertain goal while being pursued by a shadowy CIA operative (Blanchett). Hanna begins to uncover details of her past and about her true nature all the while poignantly coming to grips with a totally unfamiliar world and kicking more than the occasional ass.

The film boasts a soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers and striking cinematography.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Tropes used in Hanna include:
  • Acting Unnatural: The agent following Erik down the stairs.
  • Action Girl: Hanna, naturally.
  • Air Vent Passageway
  • Animal Motifs: Goes hand in hand with Fairy Tale Motifs. For example, Marissa is both The Big Bad Wolf (obsessed with her teeth, pursues a little girl, emerges from a wolf's maw in the climax and the Cunning Vixen (red-headed, crafty and mendacious).
  • Anticlimax Boss: Isaacs turns out to be one, where as Erik puts a great deal of effort into taking out the skinhead henchman, Isaacs himself is completely worthless in a fight and easily dispatched
  • Badass:
  • Big Bad: Marissa
  • Bi the Way: Sophie, or at least she'll try it as the cool thing to do.
  • Blond Guys Are Evil: Isaacs.
  • Blue Eyes: Well it is Saoirse Ronan after all.
  • Body Double: Marissa sends one in to meet with Hanna rather than go near her herself.
  • Book Ends/Meaningful Echo: "I just missed your heart," followed by a gunshot and a cut to the title
  • Bourgeois Bohemian: Sophie's parents, Rachel and Sebastian. Especially Rachel.
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Sophie. At first.
  • Brutal Honesty: In the sense of lacking tact rather than being nice. When asked how her mother died, Hanna bluntly responds that she was shot three times.
  • Call to Adventure: Hanna believes she's "ready" for the world. When Erik agrees, he gives her a radio transponder that will reveal their position to the CIA (specifically, Marissa) if she chooses to switch it on.
  • Camp Straight: Isaacs is sooo flaming... but seems to be into women. Or hermaphrodites. Or little girls.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The camera focused on Weigler's shoes more than strictly necessary, but it's still surprising that they cause her to trip and fall to her death.
    • Chekhov's Skill: As soon as Hanna grabbed the arrow in the climax, everybody knew how the movie would end.
  • Child Soldier: Hanna puts all other child soldiers to shame.
  • CIA: It was involved in some shady stuff. They had been genetically modifying fetuses to grow up to be efficient killing machines.
  • Climbing Climax
  • Creepy Child: Hanna, as well as Miles, Sophie's little brother, to some extent.
  • Cute Bruiser: Hanna through and through.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Marissa, who sends in a Body Double to meet with Hanna rather than get near her herself. For that matter, so is the guy monitoring the CCTV when he realizes Hanna's behavior isn't quite right.
  • The Danza: Eric Bana plays Erik.
  • Death by Falling Over: Marissa. Although it was the bullet to the heart that finished her off, slipping and falling down the slide (while having already lost alot of blood from an arrow to the hip) played a significant role in her downfall.
  • The Dragon: Isaacs to Marissa.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: The Moroccan facility
  • Emotionless Girl: Hanna, or so it seems for a while.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Isaac's mooks are Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Isaacs all the way.
  • Evil Redhead: Marissa. She is not fiery, however.
  • Fairy Tale Motifs
  • Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Erik's training means Hanna can take down a reindeer or a squad of goons, he drills her on several languages and reads the encyclopaedia to her. But things like music and fiction are off-message, and Hanna only reads a book of fairy tales.
  • Foot Focus: On Marissa's heels.
  • Fractured Fairy Tale: An inevitable interpretation of the movie, thanks to the numerous fairy-tale Shout Outs.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Used several times, particularly when Marissa shoots Hanna's grandmother and when Erik impales Isaacs, probably because of the PG-13 rating. Still, it's fairly hardcore.
  • Granola Girl: Rachel seems to be this what with her lectures about not wearing make-up and her general hippie tendencies.
  • Grimmification: Kind of. The movie can be interpreted as a fractured modern fairy-tale that plays the horror in its sources for all its worth.
    • Fittingly, Hanna owns a copy of Grimm's fables.
  • Hates Being Touched: Implied with Hanna, she damn well floors a guy when he tries to kiss her.
  • Hermaphrodite: The dancer in Isaac's club. "She has both male and female genitalia."
  • Heroic Albino: Hanna.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Hitman with a Heart: Hanna, again!
  • I Am Not Your Father: It seemed to genuinely pain him to admit it.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The fate of Isaacs, although we don't really see it (see Gory Discretion Shot).
  • Impromptu Tracheotomy: "Can I borrow your pen?"
  • Indy Hat Roll: Hanna, as she escaped the CIA holding facility.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: Isaac's leitmotif (The Devil is in the Details) sounds like this.
  • Jump Scare: Hanna opens the curtains to a window and we see Marissa's eye. Complete with Scare Chord.
  • Kill'Em All: By the end of the movie, Hanna is probably the only named character still alive, and how long that's true depends on how bad the gunshot wound was. The alternate ending (which, in all honesty, really just adds to the movie's ending rather than change it), shows that she does survive, however.
  • Laser Guided Tykebomb: Hanna.
  • Last of Her Kind: Hanna is the sole survivor of a super soldier program terminated by Marissa.
  • Le Parkour: A little bit in the shipping-container scene.
  • Leitmotif: Isaacs' theme, first heard in the club, then later with Isaac whistling. Hanna also gets her own theme, aptly titled "Hanna's theme."
  • Little Miss Badass: The Movie.
  • Little Red Riding Hood: The film is full of visual and verbal references, of varying levels of directness, to Grimm's Fairytales in general and this story in particular.
  • Mama Bear: Implied with Marissa. She's not the biological mother, but it's touched on a few times that she may consider herself something of a mother to Hanna as Marissa had headed the project that created Hanna. Epitomized when she screams, "Don't you walk away from me, young lady!" at the end.
  • Manly Gay: Isaacs' goons, apparently.
  • Neck Snap: Hanna uses a rare from-the-front version to kill the false Marissa.
  • Not-So-Innocent Whistle: Isaacs has a particularly creepy one.
  • Ominous Music Box Tune: The Sandman.
  • Omniglot: Hanna is incredibly adept at foreign languages.
  • The Oner: A particularly impressive one. Going from a long walk to an expertly choreographed brawl with a handful of Mooks.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
    • Saoirse Ronan just can't decide how thick to make Hanna's German accent.
    • Cate Blanchett attempts a southern accent. It's not entirely convincing.
    • May be a case of Fridge Brilliance in that the accent isn't supposed to be real in-universe. May be a case of Fridge Logic in that you'd think the CIA would have hired better dialect coaches for their agents.
    • Alternate Fridge Brilliance in that the times Cate Blanchett has the accent is when she is trying to come across as empathetic, friendly, and human. When she is being her true, blood thirsty self, the accent fades. Mirrored by the double who is pure fake empathy and consistently has the Southern Accent. Some interpretations suggest the Southern accent is a tool the character consciously evokes as desired.
    • Also in-universe, Hanna and Erik's accents show up even when they're speaking foreign languages.
  • Out, Damned Spot!: The first time we see Marissa, she wakes up and goes through her morning routine, including brushing her teeth. Later, as she's wound up by events, we see her brushing her teeth again, hard enough to draw blood.
  • Playing Against Type: With no less than three different actors!
    • Saoirse Ronan has been known primarily for her roles in Atonement and The Lovely Bones. Hanna's a bit more of an... active role.
    • Cate Blanchett, the Aussie rose to end all Aussie roses, is a Smug Snake of a CIA agent who isn't afraid to shed some blood.
    • Tom Hollander, known for characters with a refined dignity such as the nice vicar from Rev, or his idiot politician in In the Loop, or his villainous role in the 2nd and 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Here he's a full-tilt leering Depraved Bisexual assassin with a fondness for canary-yellow jumpsuits and who relishes the suffering of his victims.
  • Posthumous Character: Johanna, Hanna's mother.
  • Post Modernism: One interpretation.
  • Properly Paranoid: Marissa and her Body Double.
  • Raised by Wolves:
    • Erik might have taught Hanna to be a brutal fighter, drilled the encyclopedia and several languages into her, but basic human interaction is a bit beyond her.
    • Hanna's time with Sophie's family particularly emphasizes this, her First Kiss being an excellent example.
  • Redemption Equals Death: After being the "recruiter" of the super-soldier experiment, Erik dedicates the last fourteen years of his life ensuring that Hanna will have the strength to survive, even attempting to give her a good (albeit incomplete) academic education. After Hanna learns the truth about him, he draws everyone's attention so she can get away. Just as he dispatches the hitmen, Marissa finally catches up with him and kills him.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Sophie and Hanna, Lampshaded in that Sophie wears pink and Hanna wears blue in many of their scenes together.
  • Redshirt Army: Refreshingly scarce. There are a few Red Shirt deaths, but not as much as you might expect in an action movie.
  • Revealing Coverup
  • Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: Sophie and Hanna.
  • Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Hanna is a total badass, but socially inept and new to the world.
  • Scenery Porn: And how! There are gorgeous shots of a frozen lake in Finland and the deserts of Morocco especially. And there's the decaying amusement park in Germany too.
  • Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Saoirse Ronan is about to shoot you with an arrow.
  • Sensory Overload: Hanna has had virtually no interaction with modern technology. You can imagine the panic when she finds herself surrounded by a boiling electrical kettle, a loud TV, a humming ceiling fan and the buzz of flickering florescent lights. It really doesn't help that some military helicopters are seen on TV, considering the CIA raided her house with helicopters.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Hanna [dead link].
  • Ship Tease: Hanna and Sophie. It's the strongest connection Hanna makes. Also, they kiss, though the commentary points out that Hanna sees a kiss as a sign of love, not sex. Sophie is also still willing to lie for her even after she sees Hanna brutally beat people. And then there's the fact that Sophie's first thought upon meeting Hanna again was 'I might like to be a lesbian.'
  • Shown Their Work: When fleeing from the Galinki faculty, Erik and Johanna are driving a Polish car (Polonez), which was heavily in use during the 1990s.
  • Skirt Over Slacks: Worn by Hanna during the flamenco date scene.
  • Smug Snake: Marissa.
  • Spit Take: Sebastian has one of these when Hanna joins them for dinner:

Rachel: What did your mother die of, Hanna?
Hanna: (Deadpan) Three bullets.
Sebastian: *Spit Take*

  • Super Soldier: Hanna is the sole survivor from one of these programs terminated by Marissa. If you go to the Wayback Machine archive of the viral website (www.thegalinkaproject.com) you can view a picture of her personnel file - apparently the CIA was growing super-soldiers for the United States Army. Whether the Army was involved, or even KNEW, is unknown - especially as any apparent Army personnel in on the project could be CIA plants (not that any Army personnel are depicted in the movie...).
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Hanna and Sophie.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • The Body Double. She is repeatedly told to break physical contact from Hanna after being "hugged," and then she fails to heed the multiple orders to abort altogether. She's too busy trying to console a girl who needed detaining and a psych evaluation while pretending to be somebody else who was wary enough of the situation to send in a doppelganger in the first place.
    • Though, to be fair, Hanna is sitting on her and, thinking she was Marissa, probably would have killed her if she'd tried to get up or leave anyway. Judging by her reaction, even Properly Paranoid Marissa hadn't expected Hanna to actually kill the double, though it does raise the question of why, if they thought the girl was dangerous, they sent anyone in to be with her at all without a screen of bulletproof glass between them or something. The real Too Dumb to Live is probably the entire CIA operation for not just killing Hanna when they find her, which is what Marissa obviously intended to do from her terminating of all the other super soldier children.
    • Issacs, in his efforts to follow Hanna, literally tailgates her for several hours.
      • [[spoiler:Sophie's family could've slipped away when the bad guys went after Hanna. They stick around because
    • The agents that try to kill Erik catch him in an open, empty subway platform, and they have guns. They could just shoot him ... but instead try to grab him first, allowing Erik to fight them hand to hand, where he has the advantage. And they knew he was very dangerous.
  • Toy Ship: According to the director's commentary, Sophie's little brother, Miles, imagines himself her knight in shorts and t-shirt. Which Marissa correctly susses out and uses to get him to tell her where she went, by telling him she needs to protect Hanna.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: If you watched the trailer closely, there will be few surprises for you in the film.
  • Training from Hell: Hanna spent her childhood learning to be constantly on guard, even while sleeping, with her father springing attacks without warning.
  • Tyke Bomb: Hanna, obviously.
  • Underside Ride
  • Unkempt Beauty: Hanna.
    • Sophies mother, Rachel is a fan of this trope in general.
  • What Happened To Sophie And Her Family?:
    • We can infer it might be not-so-nice, given what we know of the bad guys, but please don't just leave us hanging!
    • We do get to see missing posters for the family (in German) when Hanna visits her grandmother's house. Chances are, Marissa Wiegler, having no further use for them, killed the family and disposed of their bodies in the river.
      • Brutal...
      • Not so, those posters are of Johanna and Eric along with a bunch of newspapers in German detailing missing, presumed murdered, women. That said, dear Marissa probably did do away with them.
      • Actually, the original script outright shows that they survived (Hanna sends a postcard to Sophie at the end), so that's something, at least.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Hanna.
  • Wicked Stepmother: Marissa, with her mother-like feelings towards Hanna, fits the bill.
  • X Meets Y:

I just missed your heart.

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