Now I read about this series somewhere sometime ago and was thinking it seemed interesting, being adapted from quite a successful movie at that time. Since I am a sucker for an action series, and with only 8 episodes, it seemed like a sure choice for me to watch a new series. Well let's see if lived up to my expectations.
Brief Story Line
Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) was a teenager who had been raised in the forest of Poland by his father Erik Heller (Joel Kinnaman - Altered Carbon TV series, The Darkest Hour etc) with various survival skills which included fighting, hunting, shooting and also various languages. Reason for such training was because Hanna was related to an off book CIA experiments referred to as Project Utrax, and at any point of time, they would want to capture her.
Being a teenager, Hanna obviously wanted to experience something new, which unfortunately led the CIA to their hideout. The agent in charge of the Utrax project back then named Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos - If I Stay, Big Love TV series etc) wanted to make sure she could capture Erik and Hanna as she felt responsible for them escaping the facility 15 years before.
So what would happen to Hanna and Erik? Find them all in this action drama series.
End of Brief Story Line
I had a mixed feelings after seeing this series. The first couple of episodes were quite loyal to the original movie which I thought was good cause it was the intensity that attracted me from the movie. However, when the story developed further and deviate (quite a lot) from the film, I felt it was not done in an interesting way (at least for me). Yes, the writers idea of showing Hanna's character development as a teenager who had just seen the world outside the forest she lived in was good. But unfortunately it made the story lost its momentum. The intensity was no longer there and it felt kind of boring for me, especially in the middle of the season.
The cast in here to me did their jobs perfectly. Joel Kinnaman played his usual cool, no nonsense tough guy who had to take care of Hanna all by herself and facing a teenager's "wrath", while Mireille Enos was amazing as the cold hearted CIA agent who had morality issue. Fun fact: these two had played together in a mystery thriller series The Killing where I first saw them. And newcomer Esme Creed-Miles was a bit of a doubt for me at first, since her characteristic was completely different from Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Lady Bird etc) who played the role in the original 2011 movie. But Esme did convince me when she showed her excellent fight skills plus her way of portraying a confused teenager at certain times. Although sometimes I thought her appearance was a bit too normal (unlike Saoirse version who looked weird even from the start).
Aside from the three main cast, there were some recurring characters like a British teenager Sophie (Rhianne Barreto), one of Erik's old friends from the army named Dieter (Benno Fürmann) and ruthless CIA Deputy Director Jerome Sawyer (Khalid Abdalla - Our Kind of Traitor etc). There were also some more minor new characters created for the series, but they did not leave too much impression (especially Sophie's friends). There was one interesting character who showed up a lot in the season finale and I think might have significantly more part in second season. Yes this one was already renewed and probably would be released in 2020.
The action sequence here were pretty amazing for a TV series. It did not disappoint and I thought was at par with the original movie. It was violent and very quickly taken. This was not a special effect ridden series, so there would be no such feat here. The only special effects you could see would be the explosions effect. The story was set in various countries as well, like in Poland, Morocco, Germany, England (noticed the driver's side was on the right side, just like in Indonesia) and USA with conversations done in the country's native language.
Overall I thought it was not a bad idea to make this into a series, especially since the original movie's story had a lot of things they could develop. The early part and the season finale were my most favorite episodes, while the middle were not that interesting to me, especially when it focused a lot on Hanna acting like the normal teenager. Hanna's relationship with Sophie was one of the highlight for me in the original movie, but in here it felt a bit too much and took a lot of screen time. The ending was excellent and different from the film, but I could understand as it was meant to be continued to the following season.
So if you are looking for an action series with only 8 episodes ranging from 47 to 55 minutes duration that had an interesting story, this could be an option. I personally think watching the original movie first is just optional cause it did not have impact on your understanding the plot, except of course if you want to see it for comparison purpose. However, if you really want the story to be exactly the same with the movie, then you might feel disappointed. Of course if you like the combination of a coming of age of unusual highly trained teenager with some well executed action sequence, then I believe you would enjoy this. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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