Hanna: wild thing runs fast

Our titular adolescent home-schooled superathlete (Saoirse Ronan) grows up near the North Pole receiving instruction in hunting and fighting by her survivalist dad with a past (Eric Bana). When she’s finally ready to leave their frozen nest she does so knowing that a certain nefarious CIA operative (Cate Blanchett) will instantly be out to kill dad and maybe do something worse to her: there are intimations that she’s got some sort of top-secret experimental juice in her genes. A genuine wild child whose knowledge of culture has been culled entirely from a slim encyclopedia but whose strength and agility is ninjalike, Hanna’s story slides between her discovering the world and her killing a whole lot of people in it. (Though, if it makes you feel better, she doesn’t seem to enjoy her displays of lethal child-violence nearly as much as Chloë Moretz does in Kick-Ass.)

Director Joe Wright reportedly inherited the project from Danny Boyle, to whom Hanna, with its pulsing chase narrative, techno-friendliness and air of childish awe, seems more naturally suited. But then again, Wright, who previously helmed Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, hasn’t really distinguished himself as being naturally suited for anything besides ultra-high production values, which he exploits very professionally (and I don’t use that word casually). Employing jump cuts, flashing lights and the Chemical Brothers, Wright seems eager to shake off the stateliness of his extant work, get the blood pumping, and start acting his age (he’s not yet 40). Some of this is pretty fun and intriguing, but it’s also uneven and confused, its sci-fi aspects are barely even glazed over, and I’m just not sure what to make it as a whole. I appreciate Wright’s willingness to eschew certain globalized thriller conventions (there are no titles announcing our current location being typed over establishing shots) and focus on sensation over story (a good thing since David Farr and Seth Lochhead’s sub-Bourne script is riddled with gaping holes: where did our snowy middle-of-nowhere forest-spawned Hanna learn to use handguns and personal computers anyway?), but if my praise feels miserly it’s just that Wright’s rebooted stylistics feel tacked on much of the time, more schematic than suasive. Bizarrely, Wright claims to be influenced here by David Lynch, while Hanna feels so much more like less trigger-happy (with regards to both guns and editing) Tony Scott.

But okay, I think I can spot the Lynch-pin. There are some roaming kooky villains on little Hanna’s trail. The sadistic leader (Tom Hollander, who it must be said really seems to having a great time) wears silly jumpsuits and does a little soft-shoe while interrogating an English family in a yard full of shipping containers, all very theatrical. His underlings are all skinheads, because apparently it’s easy as pie to find neo-Nazis just hanging around in North Africa, right? Does self-consciously quirky, menacing nonsense constitute a “Lynchian” touch? Perhaps if you don’t watch Lynch’s films very carefully. Or at all.

A troubled, nearly transcendent duet: The Soloist

The based-on-true-story premise reads as pretty pedestrian. LA Times staffer crashes his bike, bashes his head, runs into a homeless head case and secretly virtuosic cellist, and hits upon a knockout idea for his column. Good copy leads to friendship, which leads to second chances, increased public awareness of homelessness, and so on. But The Soloist plumbs deeper into interdependence and responsibility than such cynical synopsizing lets on. It does indeed deliver the (feel-)goods, but what it lets us feel good about is failure, fleeting victories, and unnerving ambiguities.

Nathaniel Ayers wears some crazy duds, including a jacket with a patch on it that reads VISITOR. This seems apt as Nathaniel’s P-Funk-hits-the-skids outfits and erratic, verbose behaviour can render him otherworldly to amused passersby. Yet VISITOR can also be construed as ironic, given that Nathaniel’s one of 90,000 homeless people in Greater Los Angeles, a population that may not have an address but is hardly just passing through. Jamie Foxx’s performance as Nathaniel is immersive and specific. He grants Nathaniel his rightful charisma without being needlessly ingratiating. We come to care about Nathaniel terribly, but, despite the misguided efforts of director Joe Wright—more on that in a moment—we're never fooled into thinking we can fully comprehend his wildly fraught interior world. And anyway, it’s not his story.

Steve Lopez is the journalist, a workaholic in an imploding industry, and our protagonist. As their association thickens, Steve seems to believe he can save Nathaniel from drowning in marginality and madness, and this is where The Soloist, scripted by Susannah Grant from Lopez’s memoir, bucks against formula. Robert Downey Jr. invests Steve with layers of guilt and uncertainty that no amount of energy, column inches or phone calls can ease. With nuances that play out with wonderful clarity across his wearied face, Downey’s is a grounding presence. His desperation never makes a spectacle of itself, but rather burrows into his engaging surface cocksureness and flurry of conflicting desires.

Making a spectacle however seems to be Wright’s overriding raison d’être. I appreciate Wright’s willingness to infuse unabashed emotionalism into his camerawork, but there are scenes in The Soloist that, recalling Wright’s cripplingly show-offy work and penchant for bathos in Atonement, suffer from a lack of trust in the material. Wright tries too hard to externalize Nathaniel’s subjective confusion and bliss, which at its worst apes the third-act psychedelic freak-out of 2001. At times Wright verges on rendering homelessness as tastefully aestheticized and numbingly maudlin. On the other hand, the film’s rhythms are immaculate. The Soloist is partly about the transcendence of music, and, in harmony with this, Paul Tothill’s taut, melodic editing feels utterly inspired.