Search found 1 match: Cate Blanchett

from one badass adolescent to another, but here our heroine is a cliché of a different sort; a virtuous fair-haired lil red riding hood (saoirse ronan, a delight) who just so happens to be a trained killer, isolated from the world by her grimly paranoid father (eric bana) until she's ready to take on the big bad marissa (cate blanchett) who's out to get her for some reason nobody cares about. fortunately, we aren't encouraged to be all hyuk hyuk awesome!!1 when she puts her skills to use (kick ass comes to mind) so much as worry about the poor thing as she reluctantly navigates from one hazard to the next without understanding a damn thing that's going on, and we're forced (by those goddamned eyes of hers, and bana's eyes too) to consider the way parents forge us all in their own image before we have the slightest modicum of "free choice". it's a coming of age story where coming of age effectively means questioning every damn thing you've ever been taught and cobbling something together from the mess that remains.

still, it's hard to take this seriously as a thematic goldmine when wright (atonement) spends so much time spelling out the fairytale motifs that would've been apparent to just about anyone from plot alone, and it's a shame so much of the second half is devoted to expanding on a half-baked backstory that makes no sense and isn't very interesting anyway. hanna's real calling card is all the tongue-in-cheek silliness on show; here is a genre piece that actually enjoys itself, with blanchett delivering a completely retarded performance as the psychotic arch-baddie, her henchman (tom hollander) coming across like some funhouse clockwork orange caricature, and hanna herself having to negotiate the bizarro world of pubescent social games alongside the precocious little daughter of a hilariously annoying, oddly sympathetic family that briefly takes her in.

it's kind of beautifully filmed too, this dumb thing; spontaneous and colourful, every action scene is meticulously choreographed to dance a distinctive environment with fleet-footed assurance and flair, all in service of tense, exhilarating set pieces with barely a whiff of the trendily ominous or ironic. didn't think i'd be saying this about a joe wright movie, but it's stylistically idiosyncratic enough to elevate a paltry, arbitrary story into something like irreverent pulp.