A Dark, Violent and delightful surprise, with a kickin’ score!
I hadn’t been in Los Angeles all that long, really. Wasn’t acclimated to the temperature, and still thought sixty degrees was “warm.” In-n-Out was a novelty for me, and so were all the movie theater options available (you mean I can go to the theater Tarantino owns whenever I want??).
Joe Wright as a director was on my radar, but I had only seen his Pride and Prejudice, which I thought “was fine.” Both Atonement and The Soloist were a skip for me based on the marketing, which made the trailer for Hanna a bit of a surprise when I saw it.
This was going to be Joe Wright’s next film? A stylized action flick scored entirely by The Chemical Brothers? I was immediately intrigued. Daft Punk’s TRON: Legacy soundtrack proved that a kickin’ score could go a long way, so this marriage of filmmaker and musician seemed promising to me.
And boy did it deliver! The movie was so constructed and stylized, yet raw, and there was a violent energy that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Hanna’s escape from the government facility and the long-take of her father fighting his pursuers in a garage were just two small scenes in this film that blew me away. The set design (at the end) was especially wonderful, and when that last frame hit I could finally breathe. I loved every bit of the soundtrack and bought it as soon as I could. To this day it autoplays whenever I plug my phone into the car to listen to tunes on my commute.
If you missed out on seeing this movie in theaters, I HIGHLY recommend renting it or buying it as soon as you can. It will make a great double-feature with the upcoming Atomic Blonde.
Writer/Creator/Web Guy for After the Hype. Created an animated fantasy webseries called Flagon. GM for Demon Dayz: An Actual Play Podcast, which you can conveniently find here on athpod.com