Overrated/Underpraised: HANNA vs ABDUCTION

Nathan Adams of Filmschoolrejects has started a cool new column which pits a film with undeserved love against an unfortunately ignored or ridiculed one. I'm making a similar blog, and by similar I mean the exact same. :)
Before I begin, I must offer a quick disclaimer: If you are looking for something with Hanna’s unique visual style, Abduction is not for you. It is sillier and dumber. However, seeing as the stories are pretty similar and most people are more interested in a fun action flick I am going to compare these two nevertheless (don’t worry, there are no spoilers).
Both movies feature a teenager who has been trained by their parents for combat every day of their life. Suddenly, agents claiming to be government officials show up at the teen’s doorstep and all hell breaks loose. It is actually a pretty simple plot, come to think of it.
In Hanna, the protagonist, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan of Atonement) has spent her entire childhood in the middle of the Arctic hunting deer, learning twenty different languages, and dueling her father Erik (Eric Bana). She doesn’t remember seeing another woman and she doesn’t even know what music is. Hanna decides it is time to start her life mission, and tries to assassinate the evil CIA official Marissa. She fails, and ends up on the run. Marissa (Cate Blanchett), a super-proper woman with bright red lipstick who brushes her teeth until her gums bleed, contracts a bunch of thugs to aid her own agents in killing Hanna. The fight is on.
Hanna is meant to be symbolism for growing up, and it makes sense for her enemy to be the battle-hardened artificial government agent Marissa. What makes for a good story though isn’t always a responsible choice. The effect of the movie is that not only do children growing up have no support, but every US citizen should not trust the government. And by “not trust” I mean “expect them to be corrupt child killers with no morals whatsoever.” This is particular insulting because the director (Joe Wright) is British.
It might seem like I am overthinking it, or that I am naïve to atrocities of the state. I don’t think so. If we start accepting the thinking that our government not only doesn’t have our interests at heart, but is outright lying, our society falls apart. We don’t honestly believe it—if we did there would be a much bigger outcry—but we act like it is the case all the same. If we don’t trust the government and don’t even think it can be changed, we are going to be far less likely to try and make change. A lack of trust also means a general disrespect for the law. If you start thinking not every rule applies to you, things get really screwy.
The fact of the matter is there is a clear cut right and wrong. If we live off the benefits of the government we should be accepting that we are a part of the nation. We must follow the laws because that is the only way to maintain order. It is easy to complain about little things, but the fact of the matter is the US is one of the safest and most prosperous nations in the world. The biggest advocates for a “relative system of right and wrong” are the gangs that break the law in order to keep the streets safe or to use drugs that they thing it is unfair to regulate. They are poison, but lots of wealthier, happier Americans are happy to use the drugs they distribute or disrespect the officials working to put them behind bars.
Hanna is a small part in this attitude, but it is a part. And it shouldn’t be the kind of thing we choose as entertainment.
Abduction isn’t exactly a love letter to the government, but it isn’t a conspiracy theory either. In this movie’s universe, there are corrupt agents, but on the whole we have a system that is meant for good. The young protagonist needs to work for himself and grow up, and he should not blindly trust or rely on anyone, but he isn’t alone. There are friends and allies who understand him and want to help him. The society isn’t evil and there are places he can go to seek help. As someone who is himself “coming of age” this is more realistic and more encouraging. Not to say the movie has deep messages or anything, but what it does offer is far better than your usual action flick.
The film is pretty entertaining too. We don’t have any striking visuals or sophisticated metaphors, but we have a fun, engaging story. This movie was panned by critics as it tanked at the box office, but frankly, it doesn’t deserve that kind of hate. In Abduction, the protagonist, named Nathan (think of how much lamer it would be if they came up with the title in the same way as the producers of Hanna did) has also been trained by his parents for a conflict. On the downside, the parents pretended they were only teaching him to exercise (because kick-boxing with your parents for hours every-day is totally normal). On the bright side, they didn’t make him live in the tundra. And they gave him an Ipod, so he knows all about the whole “music” thing.
Unfortunately, things turn bad when Nathan stumbles on an internet site with a picture of a child who went missing at age three. The image has been updated to show what the experts predict the child would look like, and guess what: It looks just like him. What is more, in the child picture the kid is wearing his shirt, complete with a little stain. Nathan replies to the message and confronts his parents, only to have men walk into the house claiming they are feds. A gunfight breaks out and the whole house blows up. That is only the beginning.
Nathan is a much more engaging and relatable hero than Hanna. We see he has flaws (his temper and impulsiveness) and we see that while he is good at combat he isn’t perfect. While from a marketing perspective it might have been a poor choice to choose Twilight star Taylor Lautner—he brought in girl viewers but scared off guys—he is actually pretty likable. He is struggling just the slightest bit, but it is hard not to find him charming.
The intriguing concept, fast-paced story, engaging fight scenes, and genuine acting (Michael Nyquvist, the male protagonist of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, plays the villain) make the story an entertaining B-movie flick. Aside from a few times where we must interrupt the plot to see Lautner shirtless, the movie really has nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t aim very high, and not everyone will like it, but it satisfies its target audience and a few more people as well.
If you are looking for a teen-warrior action flick, Abduction is definitely the way to go.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (A)

You knew this day would come some day. They finally made a decent Twilight movie.

Among my many, many complaints with this series has been that the protagonist--a teenage girl named Bella--is useless, pathetic, and completely reliant on her boyfriends to the point that she would kill herself if they broke up. She does everything her vampire lover--Edward--says, and she never contradicts his creepy behavior like stealing her car's engine spark so she won't see other guys or sneaking into her room at night and watching her sleep. Worse, she obsesses over the guys she likes relentlessly and spent the last three films either trying to bed them or crying that they weren't talking to her.

Well, it has taken four movies, but Bella finally grows up. The beginning of Breaking Dawn 1 sees Bella finally marrying Edward. (One comment on that: If I get married I am not going to notify my parents by mailing them a wedding invitation, especially if I still live with them). The beginning of the movie is a touching and suspenseful look at the nervousness and excitement surrounding such an important life decision; the camera isn't just showing the drama, it is showing the little details of everyone concerned. It is very romantic, but also very real.

After the wedding, Bella and Edward go on a honeymoon to Rio and consummate their relationship while she is still human. The scene is sensual, but it isn't the gratuitous kiddy-porn New Moon and Eclipse were. Also commendable is the decision to all but ignore the sparkling vampire detail, which was interesting in the book but done so terribly in the movies even some Twi-hards apologized. Then we start to see Edward and Bella settle into marital life, and we finally see them squabbling and showing their eccentricities and being human. Then we finally get to the point of the story--Bella is pregnant with a half vampire child. It is sucking the life out of her and could very well be an antichrist. The werewolves (if you were't aware, there are werewolves in this series) want to destroy it and Edward wants Bella to get an abortion. She refuses. It is her baby and she is willing to die for it. Even Edward's threats to kill himself are useless.

Here we finally see a more realistic look at love. At what a marriage should be about, and what sacrifices couples need to make. This is what fantasy should be used to show--real life issues that we can all relate to.

The director is Bill Condon, who got an Oscar for writing (but not directing) Chicago. Oddly, the only credited writer (not counting the fact it is based on a book by The Host author Stephanie Meyers) is Melissa Rosenberg, who has written every Twilight movie. It is interesting to see them hire Condon but not have him edit the script to fit his own vision seeing as he is primarily a writer, but it totally works (he did direct a few films including Dreamgirls). The movie has a unique visual style that still fits with the first three's, and the camera lingers on every detail and entraps the viewers in the story. The team behind Eclipse did a better job with the battle sequences, but the fight scenes in this, while shorter and choppier, are still above average. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who did a bunch of Guillermo Del Toro's films including Pan's Labyrinth, is great, as usual. I completely agree with the Art Director's Guild to nominate this film for their annual award. It might even get an Oscar nod in this category.

Kristin Stewart does her weird mouth-breathing thing, but is still good (she has never been the problem in the series). Taylor Lautner (as Jacob, the werewolf who loves Bella), seems a little over his head in this darker installment--he isn't serious enough. As for Robert Pattinson (who plays Edward), after his decent job in Remember Me I am not yet going to say he is a bad actor, but I will say he is awful in this (as he has been in every Twilight movie). His emotions are depressed, petulant, and comatose. Maybe it is his attempts to hide his British accent. At least the make-up job is better than before. The worst acting, though, comes from a thirty second clip halfway through the end credits featuring the Volturi (vampire royalty), all of whom are so laughably awful it is hard to believe they aren't trying to be bad. They have got to have given the worst performance of the year, and they are in the movie for literally thirty seconds! This atrociousness is balanced out by Billy Burke as Bella's father, who nearly brought me to tears. Some day someone should give him a good role.

In the beginning of this review I called this movie "decent." In fact, loathe as I am to admit it, I think it's really pretty awesome!