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Hanna reboots the 2011 Saoirse Ronan thriller – which propelled her to the fore as the 16-year-old teenage assassin, and was a pretty decent movie – in an 8-part Amazon Prime TV series, with Esme Creed-Miles in the lead role.
As a baby, she’s taken away by her new ‘Mum and Dad’, Erik (Joel Kinnaman – Suicide Squad, Altered Carbon, Robocop reboot) and Johanna (Joanna Kulig) – but events separate them and it’s up to Erik to take Hanna into the woods and train her up. However, watching a near-middle-aged man and a teen girl having to make their own way in the world in that environment, it made me think – surely a better series would be one based on the Sony Playstation game, The Last Of Us? I know there’s zombies in The Walking Dead, but it’s still a cool idea.
After all this time, they think they’re safe(-ish), but still in pursuit is Marissa (Mireille Enos – World War Z, Sabotage) and Jacobs (Andy Nyman – Ghost Stories).
She chances across a young man, Arvo (Aleksandr Gorchilin), and then as with the film, in due course, Hanna ends up communicating with more people a little closer to society, in the form of the army, but then it all hits the fan and she goes on the run.
However, just when things start to be coming together and getting engaging, they fall back into a slump just as quickly. This is apparent when Hanna befriends a family on holiday – including the daughter, Sophie (Rhianne Barreto), and you feel more like you’ve put a teen coming-of-age drama on by mistake.
Early on, it’s kinda pretty gross when a baddie ends up knocked into an incinerator, screaming away, although the quality of the CGI glames isn’t up to scratch, but you get the point. That said, I’m watching this on a preview as I type, so there’s always a chance that I’m not watching the final version.
Throw in some flashbacks and, so far, I’ve seen three of the eight episodes, and it does feel rather less than the sum of its parts. That could be because, so far, I’ve only seen 3/8th of a full story, and perhaps it’ll hang together better in the full telling. Time will tell when I watch the rest, soon. Either way, it doesn’t help when a number of the action – and occasionally humourous – moments are usually something I’ve seen done before.
Hanna Season 1 is available now on Amazon Prime.
You can also buy the original movie on Blu-ray, Amazon Video and DVD.
Episodes 1-3: 3/10
Cert: 
Running time: 8 episodes at 48-60 minutes each
Studio: Amazon Prime
Year: 2019
Widescreen: 2.00:1
Released: March 29th 2019
Series Directors: Anders Engström, Jon Jones, Amy Neil, Sarah Adina Smith
Series Producers: Hugh Warren, Tom Mullens, Howard Ellis, Adam Goodman,
Writers: David Farr, Ingeborg Topsøe
Music: Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury, Simon Ashdown
Cast:
Hanna: Esme Creed-Miles
Eruk: Joel Kinnaman
Marissa: Mireille Enos
Sophie: Rhianne Barreto
Jerome Sawyer: Khalid Abdalla
Jacobs: Andy Nyman
Johanna: Joanna Kulig
Arvo: Aleksandr Gorchilin
Olivier: Félicien Juttner
Benoit: Giles Norris-Tari
Carl Meisner: Justin Salinger
Jay: Kemaal Deen-Ellis
Dieter: Benno Fürmann
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.