Everything about Amazon Prime’sHannaindicates it should be more fun than it is. It’s adapted from the frenetic,Chemical Brothers-soundtracked film of the same name directed byJoe Wright. It reunitesJoel KinnamanandMireille Enoson-screen for the first time since the pair starred inThe Killing. Its story revolves around ateenaged assassintrained in the woods to kill dudes twice her size with ease. Its first trailer was subtitled with the absolutely wonderful phraseBABY HEIST, for goodness sake. And yet, outside of some tremendous lead performances and a few emotional bright spots, the eight-episode first season brought to life byDavid Farr(The Night Manager) never kicks into any gear close to what its potential suggests. Which is funny, because there’s a ton of actual kicking going on here. All that woodland training was apparently for naught, because it never really connects.
Kinnaman plays Erik Heller, an ex-CIA operative who rescues a newborn named Hanna from a mysterious, off-the-books government experiment. Heller and the child escape into the snowy Northern Europe wilderness, but Hanna’s mother, Johanna (Joanna Kulig), is killed in the attempt. For fifteen years, Heller trains Hanna as the perfect under-18 killing machine, basicallyLogan’s X-23 with a Finnish accent. (She also ages intoEsme Creed-Miles.) A chance encounter with a logger her own age sets off a chain of events forcing Heller and Hanna to flee the wilderness, pursued by ruthless CIA agent Marissa Weigler (Enos).
Creed-Miles has a presence that’s shockingly magnetic considering she really only broke out two years ago inClio Barnard’sDark River. The Hanna character is a strange one; it would be so easy to make her a blank slate badness or so much a fish out of water she’s more caricature than human. But Creed-Miles sits comfortably in the middle, leaving the forest and entering a normal with a curiosity you believe, but also unleashing a shriek at all the right moments to remind you that, right, deadly trained assassin. And if anything works like a charm here it’s the character’s relationship with her surrogate father, thanks in large part to a performance from Kinnaman that’s charming in its weariness. Between Hanna and his futuristic cowboy-come-to-town routine in Netflix’sAltered Carbon, Kinnaman has really washed most of thatSuicide Squadstink off himself. The man can do action—and doesplentyhere—but he really shines in small moments. Heller gives Hanna a sideways look in Episode 8 that is filled with such pure, genuine paternal love that I’m relatively sure it could get a person pregnant.
Unfortunately, the two are asked to carry a premise that is stretched mighty thin, even over a mere eight episodes. The entire thing plays out in pretty basic fashion — Heller and Hanna get separated, Heller and Hanna are reunited, mix with explosions and repeat until the end. Itcanbe fun—watching Hanna snap random goons' necks is good for at least one jolting “oh, wow” an episode—but a cat-and-mouse game is hard to draw out. Eventually, the mouse either gets caught or is just sitting there, you know?
Farr and Co. try and add depth to the movie’s bare-bones plotline by having Hanna temporarily stay with a British family, becoming quick best friends with the rambunctious teen daughter Sophie (Rhianne Barreto). It’s clear what the series is trying to do, contrasting the violent covert-ops storyline with a coming-of-age B-plot to illustrate the tug-of-war happening on both sides of Hanna’s being. But the two stories never actually gel into anything meaningful; Hanna dips her toes into a normal teenager’s life—boys, house parties,two different sceneswhere Hanna discovers the joys of dance music—but nothing of much consequence happens as a result. (Although Hanna does kick a dickhead teen boy straight in the face in easily the most rewind-able moment of the show.)
What’s left beside the emotional throughline is the action, which arrives often and bone-breaking enough to makeHannaa perfect mindless binge. It’s the type of extremely digestible choreographed violence, pretty much indistinguishable from, say Amazon’sJack Ryan, that works fine if you’re looking to escape into a shootout or 12. (The outlier being a sequence from directorJon Jones' Episode 3 that sees Kinnaman going on a one-man-army tear through a city, a set piece more thrilling than the rest of the series combined.)
But Hanna really doesn’t have any drive outside of shepherding the character between these shoot-em-ups. Which is a shame, given the uniqueness of that character; once out of the woods, literally everything in the world is new to Hanna. Somewhere in the attempt to turn this story into a series, it feels likeHannaforgot to stop and be curious in between ass-kickings.
Rating: ★★
All eight episodes ofHannapremiere on Amazon Prime on March 29.
