Once upon a time there was a little girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan: The Lovely Bones). Hanna lived in a snowy forest with her father, Erik (Eric Bana: Star Trek, The Time Traveler's Wife), who has done his best to teach her everything she needs to know to be able to survive, but children grow up, and there is only so much a child can learn from her father before she wants to learn more.
Knowing that he will eventually need to let Hanna experience the rest of the world, Erik retrieves a box he has hidden for many years, and presents it to Hanna. He tells her that if she flips the switch on the box everything will change and she can leave, but that an evil witch named Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett: The Lord of the Rings) will come for her, and she will not stop until one of them is dead.
Hanna feels she is ready though, so she flips the switch. Erik leaves her to deal with the witch's coming minions, reminding her where they are to meet, and that she must always “adapt or die”. Hanna soon discovers that the evil witch is more dangerous than she realized, that she has the big bad wolf on her side in the form of a man called Lewis (John MacMillan), and that defeating her will not be easy.
“Hanna” is director Joe Wright's fairy tale for the modern age, and while the wicked witch is actually an intelligence operative, and the big bad wolf is really just a perfectly normal human assassin, the tropes and symbolism of many of the Grimm's Fairy Tales play large roles in the movie as we follow the titular character's journey across Europe to meet up with her father. You have the little girl lost, out of her element, and occasionally overwhelmed by the strange reality that no amount of survival training could have prepared her for.. You have her interacting with a villain who does not appear immediately villainous (and who has a fixation with her teeth that went kind of over my head). Finally, you have that fairy tale standard moral of what happens to children who don't listen to their parents.
This is not nearly as action-y as the trailers would have you believe, but what action there is is brutal and well choreographed. Instead of a hundred minutes of Hanna cutting a bloody Kill Bill-esque swath through her enemies, what you have is a fairly intense, and frequently humourous film with a fair bit of heart as well. There is a nice balance between humour and drama in the film that keeps it entertaining, and prevents it from ever becoming too cold or stark.
A lot of the things that I liked about Wright's last directorial outing, "The Soloist” are present again. This is a movie to be experienced more than just seen. While it does not have anywhere near the warmth of that movie, the titular character has a lot of the same sense of wonder as Nathaniel Ayers, when she's not busy killing her enemies anyway.
The only problem with this film is that it does slow down a bit at parts, but usually for a good reason. Some of Marissa's scenes in particular can drag on a bit, but they serve the purpose of developing her character. In a lot of bloody-rampage action films the villains are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Alternately, some films spend so much time developing the antagonist that you actually start to feel sorry for them. That's not the case here; there's enough time spent on Marissa to let you know that she is her own person with her own drives and neurosis, but it's all kept vague to keep the focus on the fact that she is also a complete monster.
It's not a cheerful movie ( but how many un-Disneyfied fairy tales are?), but it is humourous and exciting, and I would even say a little bit beautiful. I found myself rooting for Hanna as she tried to come to terms with the fact that there is more to living in the real world than just being able to kill anyone who threatens you, being able to speak a dozen languages, and knowing how many muscles it takes to kiss. Ronan does a great job flipping back and forth between the rather bland and curious Hanna and the cold, calculating killer that will do anything to survive.
If you want a tense, exciting, but still funny movie that doesn't weigh itself down too much with unnecessary details this weekend, then I can't help but recommend “Hanna”. From the acting, to the visual presentation, to the great soundtrack, this is a fantastic movie. In the near future we will probably end up with an over-saturation of teenage girl assassin films, but I think that this will always stand out as one of the better ones.
“Hanna” is in theaters now.
Showing posts with label Fairy Tale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fairy Tale. Show all posts
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Red Riding Hood
It seems that Hollywood is no longer content with just crapping on my generation's childhood with new takes on “The Smurfs”, “Transformers”, and “G.I. Joe”, and have now moved on to going after the childhoods of many generations with films like “Beastly”, “Snow White”, and this movie, “Red Riding Hood”. These are not your normal sugar-coated, Disneyfied re-tellings though; these are dark, gritty, sexy, but still only PG-13 takes aimed squarely at the Twilighters out there.
Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”), directs this version of the classic tale of the little girl who finds herself running afoul of the big, bad wolf on her way to grandmother's house, only this girl isn't so little, it's living anime character, Amanda Seyfried (“Jennifer's Body”). Seyfried plays Valerie, daughter of a woodcutter, Cesaire (Billy Burke: “Twilight”, “Drive Angry 3D”) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen: “The Haunting in Conneticut”). Valerie lives an angsty medieval life; she is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a young woodcutter who has been her friend since childhood, but she has been promised the Henry (Max Irons), a kind and talented young blacksmith who would much more easily give her the lifestyle her mother wants her to have. Oh whatever is she to do?
Valerie's boy troubles are only slightly overshadowed by the fact that her village (located somewhere in the kingdom of Southern California if the accents are any indication) is terrorized every full moon by a werewolf. For many years this has not been a problem; the townspeople merely leave some livestock out as a sacrifice and hide themselves away. This changes when the wolf claims the life of one of the townspeople.
Suddenly the town is in a panic, and while Father Auguste (Lukas Haas: “Inception”) sends for a famous witch-hunter and wolf-slayer, many of the town's men go out to hunt the werewolf, and kill it once and for all. They think their efforts are successful, but when the witch-smeller, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman: “The Book of Eli”) arrives, he warns them that what they killed was not the werewolf at all. Fear not,though, because he and his multicultural private army will sniff out the true wolf and slay it.
If you get a “Twilight”-y kind of feel from this movie's trailers, there's a good reason for it. Not only did Hardwicke direct the first film in that series, and Billy Burke act in it, but many other characters feel directly lifted from it too. Valerie is very much an expy for Bella Swan, but without the fear of aging. Peter is a combination of Edward and Jacob, but without all the creepy stalker behaviour and glitter, and Henry feels an awful lot like Mike Newton. In some ways this movie almost feels like a sort of “Twilight” fan-fic.
I mentioned before that the medieval townsfolk all talk like they are from Los Angeles, and while this may have been a wise directorial decision (All of them trying to fake any type of European accent would likely have been a mess), it makes the one character who does have a strong accent stand out even more. Gary Oldman's portrayal of Solomon is a perfect example of why sometimes not trying is better than trying too hard. At first he sounds like he is supposed to be German, but from there it just goes to crap as his accent wanders all over the place. This is not a slight on his portrayal, as his character was one of the best in the film, but an entire film of people doing this would have been incredibly annoying.
The film was pretty much what I expected it to be for about the first two thirds. Crazed overacting and lip-biting angst broken up by some fairly decent action sequences (featuring fairly dodgy special effects) while Valerie tries to not only choose which man she should go with, but tries to figure out who the wolf is. The film tries to keep you guessing about these two things as well.
There is no attempt to subtly hint at who you should suspect for wolfhood either. The movie bludgeons you over the head with red herring after red herring trying to make you suspect different people. Is it Grandma? Peter? Prudence? Henry? I will say, and this is one of the major things that keeps this movie from being completely awful, I did not correctly guess who the wolf was. My wife says she suspected the correct person, so I may just be dense, but it is the thing I found most satisfying about the film.
I'm sure you're wondering how one goes about stretching a story that most people tell in fifteen minutes into a one hundred minute movie? The answer is to spend the first hour completely ignoring that story. The first hour of the film is all about Valerie and her two suitors with some wolf attacks and the occasional steamy, but still PG-13, kissing scene thrown in for flavour. It's only in about the last twenty minutes of the film that they manage to cram in something like the traditional story of “Little Red Riding Hood”, complete with the “What big eyes you have” scene (and Amanda Seyfried commenting on the largeness of anyone's eyes was enough to make me laugh). It feels a little rushed after the slow pace of the first three quarters of the movie, but the ending is more satisfying than I was expecting.
I know it sounds like I liked parts of this movie, and I did in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way, but that doesn't mean I would recommend it to anyone. This is a movie for hardcore Twilighters only, and even then only for the ones that liked the movies. The acting ranges from wooden to narmy, and while the action sequences are well choreographed (even if the effects look a little dated) there simply are not enough of them to save the movie from itself. The only possible reason to see this in a theater, assuming you're not one of the aforementioned hardcore Twilighters, is for the fun of trying to guess who the wolf is, but you know what? You can do that for a lot less at home when it comes out on DVD.
“Red Riding Hood” wanders out of the forest and into theaters March 11th.
Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”), directs this version of the classic tale of the little girl who finds herself running afoul of the big, bad wolf on her way to grandmother's house, only this girl isn't so little, it's living anime character, Amanda Seyfried (“Jennifer's Body”). Seyfried plays Valerie, daughter of a woodcutter, Cesaire (Billy Burke: “Twilight”, “Drive Angry 3D”) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen: “The Haunting in Conneticut”). Valerie lives an angsty medieval life; she is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a young woodcutter who has been her friend since childhood, but she has been promised the Henry (Max Irons), a kind and talented young blacksmith who would much more easily give her the lifestyle her mother wants her to have. Oh whatever is she to do?
Valerie's boy troubles are only slightly overshadowed by the fact that her village (located somewhere in the kingdom of Southern California if the accents are any indication) is terrorized every full moon by a werewolf. For many years this has not been a problem; the townspeople merely leave some livestock out as a sacrifice and hide themselves away. This changes when the wolf claims the life of one of the townspeople.
Suddenly the town is in a panic, and while Father Auguste (Lukas Haas: “Inception”) sends for a famous witch-hunter and wolf-slayer, many of the town's men go out to hunt the werewolf, and kill it once and for all. They think their efforts are successful, but when the witch-smeller, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman: “The Book of Eli”) arrives, he warns them that what they killed was not the werewolf at all. Fear not,though, because he and his multicultural private army will sniff out the true wolf and slay it.
If you get a “Twilight”-y kind of feel from this movie's trailers, there's a good reason for it. Not only did Hardwicke direct the first film in that series, and Billy Burke act in it, but many other characters feel directly lifted from it too. Valerie is very much an expy for Bella Swan, but without the fear of aging. Peter is a combination of Edward and Jacob, but without all the creepy stalker behaviour and glitter, and Henry feels an awful lot like Mike Newton. In some ways this movie almost feels like a sort of “Twilight” fan-fic.
I mentioned before that the medieval townsfolk all talk like they are from Los Angeles, and while this may have been a wise directorial decision (All of them trying to fake any type of European accent would likely have been a mess), it makes the one character who does have a strong accent stand out even more. Gary Oldman's portrayal of Solomon is a perfect example of why sometimes not trying is better than trying too hard. At first he sounds like he is supposed to be German, but from there it just goes to crap as his accent wanders all over the place. This is not a slight on his portrayal, as his character was one of the best in the film, but an entire film of people doing this would have been incredibly annoying.
The film was pretty much what I expected it to be for about the first two thirds. Crazed overacting and lip-biting angst broken up by some fairly decent action sequences (featuring fairly dodgy special effects) while Valerie tries to not only choose which man she should go with, but tries to figure out who the wolf is. The film tries to keep you guessing about these two things as well.
There is no attempt to subtly hint at who you should suspect for wolfhood either. The movie bludgeons you over the head with red herring after red herring trying to make you suspect different people. Is it Grandma? Peter? Prudence? Henry? I will say, and this is one of the major things that keeps this movie from being completely awful, I did not correctly guess who the wolf was. My wife says she suspected the correct person, so I may just be dense, but it is the thing I found most satisfying about the film.
I'm sure you're wondering how one goes about stretching a story that most people tell in fifteen minutes into a one hundred minute movie? The answer is to spend the first hour completely ignoring that story. The first hour of the film is all about Valerie and her two suitors with some wolf attacks and the occasional steamy, but still PG-13, kissing scene thrown in for flavour. It's only in about the last twenty minutes of the film that they manage to cram in something like the traditional story of “Little Red Riding Hood”, complete with the “What big eyes you have” scene (and Amanda Seyfried commenting on the largeness of anyone's eyes was enough to make me laugh). It feels a little rushed after the slow pace of the first three quarters of the movie, but the ending is more satisfying than I was expecting.
I know it sounds like I liked parts of this movie, and I did in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way, but that doesn't mean I would recommend it to anyone. This is a movie for hardcore Twilighters only, and even then only for the ones that liked the movies. The acting ranges from wooden to narmy, and while the action sequences are well choreographed (even if the effects look a little dated) there simply are not enough of them to save the movie from itself. The only possible reason to see this in a theater, assuming you're not one of the aforementioned hardcore Twilighters, is for the fun of trying to guess who the wolf is, but you know what? You can do that for a lot less at home when it comes out on DVD.
“Red Riding Hood” wanders out of the forest and into theaters March 11th.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)