HANNA

An abstract interpretation of the "Little Red Riding Hood" children's horror story, "Hanna" is a stylized shell. Saoirse Ronan plays 16-year-old Hanna. Her father, a former CIA agent named Erik (Eric Bana), trains her in a remote wintry Finland forest to become a killing-machine à la Femme Nikita.

In their log cabin Hanna has also learned to speak four or five languages. When she is ready to handle all the violence international espionage has to offer, the blonde femme fatale strikes out on her own. Father and daughter agree to reunite in Berlin. Flaming-bitch-on-wheels intelligence op Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) has a vested interest in capturing Hanna. The perfect assassin Hanna is Wiegler's brainchild.

Don't go looking for a plot that even remotely resembles the Grimm Brothers story.

A giant, ostentatiously designed, wolf head tunnel-entrance is the film's most obvious hat-tip aside from a book of fairy tales that Hanna reads. Hanna adeptly  evades danger and doles out the requisite ass-kickings, but there's no sense of logic or reason to her motivations.

Chase scenes underscored with music from the Chemical Brothers don't mean much when you have no idea what's at stake. Hanna may as well be a robot. Director Joe Wright ("Atonement") has gone astray. Sci-fi action is not a good genre for this promising filmmaker to pursue.

Rated PG-13. 111 mins.

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