Who is Hanna?

One good thing about the Caps crapping the bed a couple of weeks ago (this game, I think) was that it gave me time to watch a movie. Having quite a few recent options to choose from (thank you, Black Friday/Cyber Monday), I decided on Hanna. I wasn't sure if I could really buy the premise, but I was certainly curious to see the execution.

For those unfamiliar, the premise is that a guy has raised his daughter from early childhood to be an assassin (with a specific, personal target). He was a spy, so some of it wasn't completely outlandish. To further that, he raised her in a remote location near the Arctic Circle (how remote? They had to hunt for their food). So far, so good.

But the big question is, how is she going to carry this out?

To get back to the important stuff, they did an excellent job with the little details, but the larger, plausibility issue wasn't really so great. But Hanna's interactions with other people (and technology) were very good.

I liked that, when she first meets someone to talk to, she sounds like a recorder. She remembers her lines, but can't make herself sound natural. And her knowledge is encyclopedic, but rarely useful (unsurprising, since much of it came directly out of an encyclopedia).

One weird thing that just occurred to me. Her first time in a place with electricity she gets a bit freaked out. The problems with that were two-fold: one, she didn't seem at all uncomfortable at the place where she carried out her mission (which was earlier in the movie), and two, we didn't see that again. People don't recover from something like that quite that quickly.

Also, she didn't seem to have any trouble with cars, which she also hadn't seen before (well, not since she was a toddler, at least).

And the other two problems were pretty big ones. The first was her ability to fight. If they want her to be able to believably fight grown, trained men, they needed to do something more than they did. They had a bit of an explanation for her being strong enough to do that sort of thing, but it wasn't introduced until about three-quarters of the way through the film. That's too late. Plus, no offense to Saoirse Ronan, who was otherwise excellent (and I do believe she worked really hard on the fighting part), but she didn't seem all that believable at fighting. Not that she didn't look competent; she did, but she didn't seem sufficiently outstanding to be outclassing trained guys so much bigger than her. I actually think, to make this believable, that they needed to do some special effects or very fancy choreography, and they didn't.

The last big thing that just didn't seem right: the whole film was set in motion by Hanna turning on a transponder that told her target where her father was. There wasn't any explanation for how or why he would have a transponder that was detectable (apparently world-wide; I did mention how remote they were) and that identified him, specifically. It's fairly easy to ignore, I guess, but I just don't see any explanation.

Anyway, to get back to the good parts, I did think Ms Ronan was excellent. Eric Bana was also good as her father, as was Cate Blanchett as the target.

And, as I said, they got lots of little details right. The boy staying awake to listen to his sister talk to another girl. Hanna's reaction to a boy showing some interest in her. They also spent a lot of time working on accents and languages, and it showed.

Overall, this movie felt more like a foreign film than a US one; I'm surprised, looking now, that it made as much as it did in the US. I'm glad that it did, though. I wouldn't mind seeing more films like this made, although I hope they'll put a little more emphasis into the big details, before worrying so much about the little ones.

Of course, one does need to question why there are so many movies being made recently about assassins. You'd think they'd be considered the lowest of the low, yet they're being glorified. Something's definitely wrong with that picture.

Useless Thrashing

Last night's Caps game definitely had some capacity to surprise. The game started out with the Caps winning the draw, and spending two shifts (I believe) in the offensive zone. Somehow, that did not lead to any goals. But, first mission accomplished, right? Coming out hard, and generating some sustained offensive pressure?

Unfortunately, that was mostly it for sustained pressure. There were two pretty good power plays (again, neither generating any goals, but some good pressure). And that was it. There were a few more good chances, but not nearly enough.

I wish I knew what was going on with the offense. It seems like every goalie we see is playing one of their best games of the season. Seven shut-outs now, which I'm pretty sure is more than we had all last season. And we end the season 2-4 against the Thrash, after sweeping them last year.

At least Varly (guess I was wrong about Holtby bringing us into the break) was doing a good job keeping us in the game. He had twenty-three saves to go with the one score he allowed. Alzner and Carlson did a good job in the defensive end, as did Hannan and Erskine. MarJo did well again on the face-offs, winning 64% (getting him up to seven times he's won more than half on the season. Not sure where to find his aggregate FO%, although I've seen several people mention it being below 40%. This is two positive games in a row, though; maybe he's figuring something out (or maybe it's just luck; we'll hope for the former).

Next up, the All-Star break. Then, we can hopefully get a winning streak started, and maybe even start scoring some goals. First up will be the Habs, on Tuesday.

(On a side note, I wondered for a long time for what Habs was a shortening. My guess was Les Habituels, as in the regular winners, which I maintain is better than the actual Les Habitants, meaning the inhabitants. Bor-ing.)

A Whole New World

Ok, not really. Last night was barely a blip on the Caps season. And it didn't break the losing streak, even if the Caps did get a point.

The plus was that the team did look much better than the last few games, but that's certainly in the category of damning with faint praise.

Semin and MarJo were both out with the flu.

Brooksie had a pretty good game; a goal, quite a few shots (seven on net, plus six more). OV looked a bit better, although he's still trying to stick-handle through defenders too much. He was also unlucky with another shot hitting the crossbar.

Hannan had a pretty poor game, again. How did this guy get a $4.5M annual contract, again? He's been on the ice for ten goals against since coming over. He also passed straight to a Duck only a few feet from the goal early in this game. Fortunately, the Duck was behind the net and no damage was done, but it still looked pretty bad. At the rate he's going so far, no danger of us trying to re-sign him next year; hopefully, that'll change.

Varly had a decent game, average, I think, by his standards. I'm guessing that he started as a way for Bruce to show that he wasn't upset about last game; I assume Neuvy will start next game.

Other than that, not much to be said about it. Not another disaster, but certainly nothing to celebrate, either. Hopefully, things will go a bit better against Boston on Saturday.