Director Joe Wright takes a break from English period costume drama with his puzzling and stylized assassin thriller, Hanna. Saoirse (pronounced sur-sha) Ronan stars as the titular charactar, a teenage girl who has spent her entirely life in an arctic wilderness training to be a killer. Her father (Eric Bana) has honed her lethal skills in the event the CIA comes after her. The mystery of why the CIA, and their evil henchwoman (Cate Blanchett), wants her so badly is the supposed mystery to uncover. I honestly didn't understand why Hanna starts running in the first place - as she had been pretty successful in hiding all of these years. So why run now? And to top it off, she can also speak several languages, so if not the artic circle as her refuge, then why not someplace else? These questions are murkily treated and detracts from the film.

The flight or flight scenes are similar to a classic German indie film called Run Lola Run. Hanna spends a good bit of the film running at top speed to a pounding electronica score. When she's not running, she's engaging in hand to hand combat with CIA sent skinheads. I found it totally implausible for Hanna to get around Africa and Europe so quickly, then be so easily found by the bad guys. It's as if every situation is set up to show her toughness. There are scenes where she meets a family and tries to achieve a level of adolescent normalcy, but they are contrived and totally unrealistic.

While the sum of its parts do not add up, Saoirse Ronan shines brightly in this film. Already critically acclaimed from her previous work with Joe Wright, Atonement, she embodies the heart and soul of her character. She physically pulls off the violence, but it is the look of being lost in a dangerous world that haunts her face; even when she comically faces her first kiss. Ronan is a bonafide star. She will become even more famous as the female lead in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. He cast her previously in The Lovely Bones and was wise to bring her. She's got talent beyond her years and will probably be one of the few teenage actresses to have longterm success in Hollywood.

Unfortunately I can't recommend Hanna on the lead performance alone. There are so many issues with the plot, I was left scratching my head at the end. It is artfully done, and has a great cast, but you need a viable plot to have a decent hilm. In this regard, Hanna is lacking.