Tag: Saoirse Ronan

Hanna

By إبن البيطار CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0

Due to times not matching up well (i.e. overlaps or 90-min waits between films) we only caught the one this week:

Hanna

“I just missed your heart.”

See it if you like: awful background “music”, arthouse films that aren’t really arthouse and rehashed plots

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A young girl is raised as a survivalist assassin in a cabin in the woods for some reason.

This is a weird film. It’s been claimed in the press that it’s the new Leon, but frankly it’s not fit to be named in the same sentence. Leon was a classic. Hanna, while sharing a very basic premise, is just another film with some good moments.

Our title character is played by Saoirse Ronan, and she is being raised in a cabin somewhere within the Arctic Circle by her father, Erik (Eric Bana). They are hiding from the CIA, specifically someone called Marissa (Cate Blanchett). One day Hanna decides she’s ready to be found and the two announce their position and then flee to Germany. I have yet to figure out exactly why.

The film does have some excellent moments, mostly relating to Hanna’s naivety as regards the big wide world and her interaction with some incidental characters – mainly a British family she encounters and a Spanish youth who tries to kiss her. These little sequences are funny and well played, balancing against the violent nature of Hanna herself.

Hanna’s secrets are slowly revealed as the film goes on, but in honesty there’s not much of a twist. Blanchett plays a very evil “bad guy” but I just couldn’t take her seriously. Bana is pretty good and all credit to Ronan for her portrayal of the confused little girl.

The worst part of the film, though, is the “music” supplied by the Chemical Brothers. They seem to be churning stuff out for every other film at the moment. Most times they’re tolerable, but in this case it’s simply dreadful. The “atmospheric” stuff sounds like someone’s fed John Carpenter speed and thrown him in a roomful of keyboards, whereas the more supposedly musical efforts are somewhat more akin to listening to a diarrhoetic elephant shitting through a tuba.

Hanna promises a lot, especially from the trailer, and it fails to deliver most of it. A slow, drawn-out film with a handful of highlight moments.

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Lovely Bones, Crazies and Crazy Heart

Cover of "The Crazies"
The Crazies - 1973 version

Bringing me up to seven films for the weekend (it’s a wonder I get any coursework done), I added The Lovely Bones, The Crazies and Crazy Heart to the “watched” list today.

The Lovely Bones

“As usual, Grandma Lynn was wrong.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A young girl is murdered but tries to help her friends and family find her killer.

The reviews I’ve seen of this to date seem to be “it’s rubbish” from those who’ve read the book and “it’s good” from those who haven’t. I’ve not and it’s OK. Don’t expect me to be able to compare against something I’ve not read.

There are some good performances, but top of the list has to be Stanley Tucci as the child killer. He’s suitably creepy without being over the top. Mark Wahlberg as the father puts on a good show and Saoirse Ronan is impressive as Susie Salmon, the central character. Nods to Susan Sarandon as the drunken chain-smoking grandmother.

Once Susie is killed an enters into a fantasy purgatory, it doesn’t take long for Peter Jackson‘s influence to show. Anyone who’s seen his superb (and frankly, superior) Heavenly Creatures will recognise the way fantasy elements have been mixed in with real life.

The problem is that the story doesn’t need all of this and especially towards the end, everything starts to seem so drawn out. It’s art for art’s sake in places and the running length could be fifteen minutes less if the waffle was cut out.

Simply put, an enjoyable film but very self-involved.

The Crazies

“We’re in trouble.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Plane crash releases a chemical weapon that sends people kill-crazy. Cue gore.

This is a remake of the 1973 original with the same title. That one was directed by George A. Romero who has stepped back to production duties on this effort. I didn’t realise either of these facts until after I’d seen the film but it is very similar to his zombie movies so it doesn’t surprise me to find out he’s involved.

I’ve not heard of any of the cast before which does help in that I had less of an idea of who was going to get killed. Of course, given the roles they play it doesn’t take long until you narrow it down and know who’s going to make it through to the end.

The gore is fairly plentiful and the corpses pile up quickly. There’s a whiff of government/army intrigue making the film some kind of cross between Dawn of the Dead and 1995’s Outbreak. It is rather by-the-numbers, but the jumps and “eeeeew” moments are plentiful which is what you pay for when you go and see a film like this.

Don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed. And I did like the ending!

Crazy Heart

“Ain’t rememberin’ wonderful?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A couple of years in the life of a downtrodden, drunk, chain-smoking, divorced (of course) country & western singer.

Jeff Bridges has been winning plaudits for his performance of Bad Blake, the central character in this run-of-the-mill drama. He deserves them, playing the part well, but doesn’t raise the film up above the average.

My main problem with Crazy Heart was that there weren’t any real surprises. “Bad” is a stereotype. The events that occur come as little or no surprise. The ending is as predictable as it comes.

Still, it’s a nice enough ride to get there and the dialogue is sharp in places. There are also some lovely lines in there. It’s a shame that such good wordplay and impressive performances are hanging off a story that twists and turns like the edge of a ruler.

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