Hanna

These days, there's nothing so thrilling in popular culture when something unique squeaks through. Most movies, TV shows, music, and books are relatively in line with our expectations. Even the best of movies and TV are usually in line with what we expect. Last year's Best Picture winner was, to many people, inspirational and entertaining, but it was also nothing surprising. Not every movie that dares to take a chance works out; one such failure is 2007's Across the Universe, which dares to tell a story with songs by the Beatles, but was an unmitigated disaster. When a daring idea works, though, it's awesome to watch. Such is the case with Hanna.

Though the concept of this fairy tale-cum-action film is simple enough--a 16-year old girl who can kick serious ass is raised in the Finnish wilderness is hunted down by government agents because of her value to the CIA--the execution is something else. A movie this deliriously unhinged would seem to be the product of David Lynch and Tony Scott; what's so surprising about Hanna is its director's pedigree. Joe Wright was previously known as an Oscar-bait director, having directed such well-made but somewhat infuriating movies like Atonement and The Soloist. Wright makes Hanna into an ambitious, enthralling, and engaging action picture with a modicum of intelligence.

It helps that the title character is played by the 21st-century version of a young Kate Winslet: Saoirse Ronan. Her name may be nearly unpronounceable, but Ronan proves here that she is nothing less than diverse in her performances. Though The Lovely Bones was also something of a disaster, Ronan delivered a fine lead performance. Here, she's a breath of fresh air, tough without feeling forced, and believably being an animal growing into a human being. Hanna is similar to other characters who want to know what it's like to be a human; she knows the notes, but not the music. She may know the names of cities, countries, and invented friends, but she doesn't know what music sounds like, or what friends can do, or what it's like to share your first kiss. That such a coming-of-age tale is woven into a kickass action movie proves how difficult it was to thread the needle that is this movie. Wright and company pull it off.

While Ronan's work is exemplary here, she's not the only one whose performance deserves accolades. Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, and Jason Flemyng play the other major adult characters here, and all do great jobs. Blanchett and Bana have the flashiest roles (though Hollander's got a colorful enough role to play), as the agent hunting the girl down and Hanna's father, respectively. Bana doesn't get to play more than a tough guy who let his emotions get the best of him a long time ago, but he plays the character well. What's more, Bana's the centerpiece of the film's most notable action scene, a single-take through a bus terminal and a subway station while taking down a cadre of bad guys. Blanchett sinks her teeth into Marisa Viegler, a frighteningly dedicated federal agent who refuses to let go of Hanna, whose value grows as the story proceeds. While her Southern accent comes and goes, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, there's no question that Blanchett is having a lot of fun in this movie, and her infectious villainy is hard to resist.

Hollander is one of those actors I wish was in every movie. Though I know dream casting can't always work, I still wish he was cast as Littlefinger in the new HBO series Game of Thrones. He'd be perfect for the scheming, dryly sarcastic character, as he's perfect here as the hitman Viegler brings out of retirement to kill Hanna. Flemyng and Williams have smaller roles, as hippie parents Hanna encounters after her escape from government custody. She jumps from one extreme to the other, from no human interaction to the brightest and wildest kind. Though they have less to do in the film, both Flemyng and Williams do a great job inhabiting their characters. Williams, in particular, has turned into one of the great character actresses of her generation, able to imbue humanity into even the smallest roles.

About halfway through Hanna, somewhere just after we're introduced to Hollander's hitman character at the burlesque club where he's criticizing his new hermaphrodite dancer (yes, really), I marveled that such a movie even exists. What's great is that Hanna was the highest-grossing new movie last weekend. The number may not have been massive, but people are flocking to this movie in bigger numbers than I would have expected. Some people are not going to like this movie; some will flat-out hate it. But for those of us who can embrace this movie's warped sensibility, it's the first genuine pleasure of 2011.