With a career built on prestige period dramas like Atonement and Pride & Prejudice, Joe Wright has given Hanna, his first foray into the action genre, the same mannered house style--turning a potential career left-turn into something of a busman's holiday. Saoirse Ronan plays Hanna, a home-schooled teen assassin who can take out out a pack of government agents like she's making a wish. She is being prepared by her black-ops father (Eric Bana) for a showdown with the CIA spy-catcher (Cate Blanchett) that murdered her mother and forced them into the icy wilds of northern Finland. When the time comes, Hanna re-enters civilisation with wide-eyed curiosity--she's never encountered music, TV or even a light switch before--and, as designed, these petals of innocence only intensify the moment when her sabre-toothed killing skills are unleashed to a thumping score by The Chemical Brothers. But just as the film is about to settle, Bourne-style, into the familiar tracks of an identity quest, Hanna veers off in search of a different kind of self-knowledge, and the middle third of the film is a folksy coming-of-age travel diary in which Hanna, drifting through the Moroccan countryside, experiences music, friendship and the open road. Fortunately, the slower scenes are carried by a strong cast: Saoirse Ronan has a wraithlike physical charisma, while Tom Hollander (The Thick of It) is pure venom as the Euro-trash sadist employed to hunt her down. The film's action-packed final lap, set in the ruins of a Brothers Grimm-themed amusement park, feels like all the corruption and cruelty of the world being reduced to wreckage at the bare hands of a willowy teenage girl. --Leo Batchelor