With an actress of a particular brilliance there's a special register of performance called "good-bad" acting. That's right, GOOD and BAD at exactly the same time (for more examples of this, please check out Meryl Streep's entire body of work post-DEVIL WEARS PRADA).

In the case of Cate, we have HANNA. A frenetic, baffling, high-octane and enjoyable thriller with our favourite Irish cailín, Saoirse Ronan, out there breaking people's necks like all girls do at that age. In Blanchett's Marisa Wiegler we get a drawl so far south that voiceless alveolar stops are practically non-existent! In place of of /t/ sounds we get kitten heels, a great wig and an unstoppable urge to neutralise a little girl. Hanna? More like HAMMA! But we loooove what she doooooees.

Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).