Hanna, first-look review: this post-Super Bowl treat is a spy caper that cranks the tension up to 11
Joe Wright’s 2011 thriller Hanna was an audacious blend of spy caper and modern fairytale. Amazon Prime’s eight-part remake is just as envelope-pushing, though in ways largely unrelated to what’s happening on screen.
In one of the more bizarre Super Bowl stunts since Katy Perry’s dancing sharks, the streaming service has made the first episode available to its subscribers for 24 hours, beginning at the peak time of Super Bowl Sunday – technically, in this part of the world, Monday – at 2.30am GMT.
What Amazon hopes to achieve with a day-long, Super Bowl-adjacent first look is less than clear. Wright’s feature was decently reviewed, and it has a minor cult following. But the world has hardly been hanging on for a Hanna expanded universe. Moreover, any excitement generated by the preview is likely to have died down by the time the series makes its official debut in March.
Perhaps it’s an attempt to upstage Netflix, which last year won the clash of the Super Bowl streaming giants by making the hitherto unannounced Cloverfield Paradox available immediately after the big game. And whatever else happens, Hanna will surely avoid the pummelling that that dross deservedly received.
David Farr, co-writer of the screenplay of the 2011 film and of the BBC’s Night Manager, has fleshed out Wright’s vision with lashings of fashionable Scandi-style murk (the setting is deepest rural Poland) and tension cranked up to the limits. At its tautest, Hanna doesn’t so much grip you as sit figuratively on your chest, forcing all the breath out.
Marketing wheezes aside, one point of interest is that the Saoirse Ronan role (a teenage super-warrior raised in isolation by her survivalist dad) has been inherited by Esme Creed-Miles. The 19-year-old Londoner, who here affects a mangled Mitteleuropa accent, is the daughter of actors Charlie Creed-Miles and Samantha Morton.
She’s something of a dead ringer for the latter, but Morton is acclaimed for her dramatic range. The first episode of Hanna confirms only that Creed-Miles, in her debut lead role, is good at punching trees and running through snow while looking vaguely out of breath and being sad.
Teenage Hanna’s melancholia flows from her unusual upbringing. As a baby, she was rescued from a creepy deep-state research facility by her father (Joel Kinnaman). Her mother was killed in the subsequent chase by helicopter. Leading the pursuit was “rogue” CIA agent – so says the Amazon press release – Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos, augmented by a villainously angular haircut). What makes Hanna so special, and why is her origin an explosive secret?
Cate Blanchett portrayed Hanna’s CIA nemesis in Wright’s movie, while Eric Bana was her protective father. Here Enos, best known from the American adaptation of The Killing, swaps tasteful outdoor wear for an sharply-cut suit and an even sharper smile. Kinnaman, Enos’s co-star in The Killing, is plausibly paranoid as Erik, the parent who saved Hanna from a nefarious government programme and is raising her in the Polish wilds to trust absolutely no-one.
Being a moody adolescent, however, Hanna is soon ignoring boring old dad. She climbs a tree for a glimpse of the wider world, and then befriends a young lumberjack working in the vicinity. That’s enough to draw the attention of Agent Marissa and her rifle-toting goons and, with Hanna and Erik running for their lives, the show is off to the races.
What happens next will remain shrouded in mystery until March. But episode one, at least, is a Super Bowl treat worth breaking out the popcorn for.
Episode one of Hanna is available on Amazon Prime until 2.30am on Tuesday 5