Movie Review

Hanna

Kill shot

TSI Five-O: Story of an almost feral child told with great sophistication

A deer running through a forest in the Arctic is being chased by a nimble footed young girl who is hunting it and when the arrow pierces the deer’s body the girl exclaims, “I just missed your heart.” With an opening sequence like that, you are sure that the film would be special. Hanna, directed by Joe Wright, is a slick action thriller about a girl who is kept hidden by her keeper in a secret location near the Arctic, and is trained in all forms of killing, so that when she is ‘ready’, she can take revenge against those who are searching for her.

The film stars Irish actress Saoirse Ronan as the title character with Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett. Saoirse Ronan plays the role of Hanna with great sophistication and Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett are at their usual best. Over all the actors truly bring the feel of the cold, ruthless world of CIA and other secret, lethal forces with such ease that it is difficult to not find the entire film a bit disturbing. Perhaps there is something inherently disturbing about a girl trained to be an assassin hidden away from civilisation and that uneasiness is felt throughout the film. 

There are also some darkly funny moments in the film when Hanna interacts with the outside world for the first time. Overall the film brings about freshness to the world of action thrillers especially, when this genre has somehow over utilised hackneyed special effects and plot lines. Hanna is refreshingly as well as grippingly thrilling without foisting over the viewer a sense of overkill.

Ready

Sallu Showcase

TSI Five-O: Salman’s show all the way; but we’re a little jaded of all the jokes already

First the good news. Ready is an improvement from Anees Bazmee last movie, the disastrous, Thank You. The bad news? The improvement is only marginal. There’s still the hare brained, scarcely plausible and ‘don’t-give-a-damn-about-continuity’ plot. Sanjana (Asin), an orphaned girl whose uncles want her to get married to guys of their choice to usurp her property runs away from her wedding and lands up at Prem’s (Salman Khan) house posing as Pooja, the girl Prem is supposed to be marrying. And predictably, some mindless identity confusion and conning mayhem follows. 

Unfortunately, most of the jokes are either recycled Rajnikanth jokes or distinctly tasteless. Take the dialogue where Paresh Rawal’s character tells a black security guard ‘Teri shakal national TV pe aa jaye to saare Indians ki nazar utar jayegi’. There’s no excuse, that’s just plain messed up. But, amazingly amidst this rubble of the death of creativity and originality there are moments that are earnestly funny, and a couple of self deprecating Salman gags (there’s a neat Dabangg reference and one about Sallu’s taking his shirt off which I thought was particularly well done) that hit the target. 

The rest is made bearable by some colourful choreography (Salman shines through in both the ‘Dhinka Chika’ and ‘Character Dheela’ songs) and decent efforts from Paresh Rawal and even Mahesh Manjrekar (as Prem’s forgetful dad). Asin looks terribly jaded and expressionless which is disappointing but, Salman still manages to hold the energy up at one end and that’s the lifeboat you’ll have to cling to if you want to sail across the sea of a cinematic mess that otherwise is so not ready for consumption.