The film stars Saoirse Ronan as the titular character, a girl raised in the wilderness of northern Finland by her father, an ex-CIA operative (Eric Bana), who trains her as an assassin.
It received positive reviews from critics with praise for the performances of Ronan, Bana and Blanchett as well as the action sequences and themes.
Hanna meets Sebastian and Rachel, who are on a camper-van holiday with their children, Sophie and Miles, and stows away in the vehicle on a ferry to Spain, seeking to reach Berlin.
Arriving at the rendezvous in an abandoned Berlin amusement park, Hanna meets Knepfler, an eccentric magician and friend of Erik's who lives there.
Hanna picks up Marissa's gun and uses it to kill her with two shots — a method she had previously used while hunting a deer at the film's beginning.
[9] Most of the filming was done at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, but locations also included Lake Kitkajärvi in Kuusamo, Finland, several German locations (including Bad Tölz, the water bridge at Magdeburg, Köhlbrandbrücke and Reeperbahn in Hamburg, and various sites in Berlin, such as Kottbusser Tor, Görlitzer Bahnhof and Spreepark[10]), as well as Ouarzazate and Essaouira in Morocco.
[7] Joe Wright, the director, has said that the movie's theme is a "fantasy" about "overcoming the dark side" during the "rites of passage" of adolescent maturation when a child transforms and "has to go into the world".
[14] He said that he was influenced by personal exposure every day as he grew up to "violent, dark, cautionary fairy tales" that "prepare children for the future obstacles in the wider world", as well as his "deep love for the mystical qualities of David Lynch movies", by the patterns of narrative that he prefers because of his dyslexia, and by working as a child in his parents' puppetry company.
[20] The "Kubrick-esque" style[21] includes Isaacs' "gleeful sadism... at times darkly comedic,"[22] a whistling villain reminiscent of Alex DeLarge.
[21] Joe Wright's "love of fairy tales and David Lynch movies"[14] was seen as blending A Clockwork Orange [22][23] and the work of the Brothers Grimm.
[24][27][28] In the "tightly-edited patchwork of visual iconography, allusion and symbolism"[29] Wiegler is equated with the Big Bad Wolf[22][27][28] or the queen in Snow White.
The site's critical consensus states: "Fantastic acting and crisply choreographed action sequences propel this unique, cool take on the revenge thriller.
"[38] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
[40] Justin Chang of Variety said that Hanna is "an exuberantly crafted chase thriller that pulses with energy from its adrenaline-pumping first minutes to its muted bang of a finish".
[3] Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, commenting "Wright combines his two genres into a stylish exercise that perversely includes some sentiment and insight".
[41] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, on the other hand, gave the film two stars out of five, stating "With its wicked-witch performance from Cate Blanchett, its derivative premise, its bland Europudding location work and some frankly outrageous boredom, this will test everyone's patience.
"[42] Kenneth Turan, of the Los Angeles Times, stated that the film "starts off like a house afire but soon burns itself out", adding that even though the film is "[b]lessed with considerable virtues, including a clever concept, crackling filmmaking and a charismatic star, it ultimately squanders all of them, undone by an unfortunate lack of subtlety and restraint".