"Once upon a time, there was a very special girl who lived in the woods with her father. . . "

The look, feel, and sound to this picture are all incredible. Colors, shapes, and vastness are everywhere; the snowy forest in Finland, the steely-circular holding rooms, the harsh shadows and lights played on the rotating columns as an army of agents chase by in lateral formation (there's your link to German expressionism; they used to just paint the blacks and whites onto the floors and walls--this had that feel but on a bigger scale). An open desert. Rectangular train cars. Spinning merry-go-rounds. The motion and movement never stop. The crazy thing is---and this very largely due to the music, original by The Chemical Brothers---we don't want it to. This was the first film in a long time that made me want to go back to the beginning and watch it all over again. To say the music was well-matched with the action would be an understatement; it gave the action such an unbelievable flow and drive that it's nearly impossible to separate Hanna's sequences from the melodies that were playing during them. Killer, just absolutely killer.
So beside the aesthetics, what of Hanna herself? She's a teenage girl who was raised by her father in isolation. Her innocence ends when she emerges into a giant, open world to fend for herself. These places are just as new to Hanna as the people who inhabit them, but somehow she's at ease, comfortable even. The "bad business" with the CIA and the reason for the chase by the end of the film become moot points; Hanna is special for many more reasons than her pursuers believe, which begs the question: what reason does Central Intelligence need for engineering super-soldier DNA when the product turns out to be more in touch with humanity than those who created her? Whatever the answer, it was a lovely ride.
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