Hanna

One of the problems of writing about a film is not giving too much of the plot away, in some films the twists and turns are vital to the enjoyment of the oeice as a whole, in this case I’m a little perplexed about how much to give away.

The titular character is a strange young girl living in the arctic wilderness with her father, constantly being attacked a spart of her training for a mission she has to choose when to start, the setting is gorgeous and you feel she would be very happy if she just stayed where she was but, as this is an action drama and not a study in idyllic lifestyles, the plot turns.

once she decides to set out on her mission things heat up very quickly and the action starts nicely, she seperates from her father , who has a seperate agenda, and events transpire that seem random but are supposedly all part of the long anticipated mission.

At this point the main protagonist appears along with a small retinue of henchmen, some official others not and the fun really begins. As Hanna travels across the tip of North africa into Europe, trying to eventually arrive in Berlin to meet her father, she meets an english family who have hired a camper van, the parents trying to be modern day hippies. this makes for some interesting interplay between their teenage daughter and Hanna. lessons on boys and fashion ensue all the while dark forces are trailing Hanna.

The story speeds up and slows down quite often as we are shown Hanna’s skills with weapons and martial arts as well as her niavetey of the modern world. As she reaches Berlin things have already been happening with her father and his own demons so her seemingly simple result of joining her father at the address she has remembered by rote for years turns into something rather different and revelations about her family and her fathers past make things, the finale is not as good as it could have been but its quite satisfying nonetheless.

The cast is pretty good, Eric Bana as the father and Cate Blanchett as the Cruella Deville style villain  are good,  particularily good  is Saoirse Ronan as Hanna. the pace does flag a little but overall its a decent action thriller worth seeing.

identity crisis ? no a solution

As a sufferer of borderline personality disorder I have issues with identity, its a common enough symptom but one of the toughest to overcome. One day your’e certain about something, anything and the next its a huge blur in your psyche.
As you can imagine this is no fun but I have made some efforts to deal with this and today i went a step further without even meaning to. I awoke today with a decent frame of mind, no indeterminate niggles I couldnt shake off and I was quite willing to crawl out of my pit when the time came. I had a blood test booked and the wife wanted to do a bit of shopping so my time was already filling up, the secret to a good day is having something to do and if possible having it already planned before I get up, but when I got home idecided to do some menial tasks on the old lap top, nothing too taxing just setting up a google account and researching some stuff.
As I was on google anyway I decided to google myself, as you do, and went through the interminable drivel that came up, someone with the same name has just been appointed as security officer for BNP in glasgow, good to know, if not particularily pleasing, and loads of other steves with serious sounding web pages, I even found myself and my wife on some outdated electoral register site and an old post I left on a website years ago was on there. I also found a site set up by a distant relative years ago that I had helped to research, I hadnt looked at the finished article so I double clicked and went on it to have a gander.
the information wasn’t new to me but it did have a profound effect on me which i couldnt have forseen. The guy, Larry, who set up the site is related to me through about twelve generations back but his earliest ancestors are also mine and these date back 1589 in Dover Kent. As I said I did know this but when you have been in doldrums such as I have you tend to forget the history of yourself and concentrate almost exclusively on navel gazing.
Seeing the names and dates, the marriages and deaths of people who would never have imagined in a million years that there descendents would one day be looking at these details, no matter what media they would have been in, made me feel something different, I cant explain what that was just something positive and life affirming. These days I am better able to soak up information and it actually sinks in and stays there, something which was not happening at all in the previous years of my life. The very fact I felt anything at all is a huge leap forward for me and I wonder if the same thing would help my fellow sufferers, the ones who have difficulty with identity anyway, the whole process of treating this condition is to listen to others with similar and to try and learn from each other, but how do I get this message out, and am I being presumptious in thinking this could help others?
I guess I wont know until I try so I will endeavour to speak to my compatriots and see where they stand on the matter, I will do so and no date report back on the outcome