J.P. Devine Movie Review: ‘Hanna’

Hanna’s back: Season 2

Okay. It’s not as good as the original 2001 movie “Hanna.” But how could it be? That movie had Cate Blanchett, Saoirse Ronan, and Eric Bana. You’d never get people like them for a series. Yet.
The first small screen Hanna was pretty good, and Hanna wasn’t as sweet faced as Ronan, but now in this second season, we’re beginning to fall for her.

When we left the first season, and our small screen Hanna, (Esme Creed-Miles) there were all those scary girls being trained to become future assassins, and how Hanna was going to get them activated and out of Utrax. (Doesn’t that sound like an over the counter bottle of something blue that one takes for acid stomach?)

It didn’t work out for Hanna back then, but now she’s on the road with the one girl she did recruit. This is Clara (Yasmin Monet Prince), who if she’d trust Hanna more, could be a great teammate. Clara has all the killer instinct she needs and has Hanna to teach her how to use it, but all she wants to do now is find her mother. So where is her mother? Oh Lord, she’s in a posh condo in Northern Romania.

So the first two sessions with these ladies is about learning how to survive in the wilderness. Hanna, of course grew up with this stuff, and we’ve been all through it, but it doesn’t seem that Clara is going to fall in love with it.

We get a closer, more intense look now at how Ultrax works, and it’s pretty scary. It’s all staked out in a place lovingly called “The Meadows,” run by Dermot Mulroney (who isn’t as cute here and lovable as he was in “My Best Friends Wedding”).

Here in dormitories and a sunshine dappled campus that looks like Sarah Lawrence College, they are fed well, given cute outfits and entirely made up backgrounds. We’re introduced here to Sandy, (Aine Rose Daly) an Irish Sandra Dee.

Time out as we’re given a shaking up. The Utrax Black and Tans chase after Hanna and Clara by truck and car and whirling black bird drones in a passage that culminates in someone’s summer cabin in the woods.

Clara isn’t here at this point, she has skipped out on her own to look for her mother, leaving Hanna trapped inside by the bad guys.

On the porch, you might notice if you’re sharp-eyed enough, sitting all lined up neat and tidy, wouldn’t you know, five or six bottles of propane, and if you remember how Jason Bourne used those, you’ll know that the bad boys are going to use them to take Hanna, trapped inside, to her death.

Oh, of course they’re not.

Thanks be to God, Marissa (Mireille Enos) Hanna’s own Inspector Javert, nose to the ground, is back with us. Perhaps this season we’ll learn what we need to know about Marissa.

By now you know Hanna well enough to know that her hook up with Utrax and Marissa is made of cellophane, and it’s all about bringing Clara out of the darkness.

No, it’s not the movie, it’s television, but it’s not your mother’s television; it’s a whole new world here, and given the money they’re spending on Hannah’s new hair coloring, we know it can only get better.

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J.P. Devine Movie Review: ‘Hanna’

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