Hanna – Look Me in the Eye

By: Kelly Kearney

Hanna and Marissa land in Vienna and manage to break-in to Pioneer’s headquarters, shuttered behind the doors of an old embassy. The two, uncover the horrifying truth behind Max Kaplan and Ethan’s creation and how their algorithm chooses the targets who land on the assassination hit list. While inside the defunct embassy, Marissa comes face to face with her father and the emotional reunion distracts him long enough for Hanna to escapes with the evidence that could bring Gordon’s entire rogue agency down.

HANNA VS. SANDY

We open on Sandy (Áine Rose Daly), who after just murdering the pregnant Anne, is now holding her fiancé and former CIA programmer, Ethan (Sam Swainsbury) hostage. Once his suicide note is written, she douses the tied-up man in alcohol to really sell the murder suicide plot for which she is angling. Nobody would question the untimely death of a man who killed his fiancé and unborn child. Sandy is all brutal business and shoves a gun in Ethan’s mouth ready to pull the trigger until she hears a noise out in the hallway. Hanna (Esmé Creed-Miles) gets the jump on her and the two have an MMA style beat down; wrecking everything but most importantly, each other. It is a fight we have been waiting for ever since they tossed fists and kicks the night before they left The Meadows. Hanna gets the upper hand and holds a gun to Sandy’s head as she tries to calm Ethan by announcing “Marissa sent me.”

Speaking of the red-headed rogue agent, Marissa (Mireille Enos) is face to face with Gordon (Ray Liotta), her abusive and controlling father, but she still seems to be confusing him for a father who cares. When he demands she hand over her gun, she does so like it is reflex and then the two get down to business. “Where’s Ethan,” she asks and the confusing dynamic between a daughter and father only gets worse from here. The little Mary (Josefina Krycnerová) we’ve seen hiding inside of Marissa’s mind is juxtaposed with the harsh and lethal woman Gordon created and none of it computes. In a series of flashbacks mixed with the present, we find out Gordon tortured Mary by locking her up and abusing her mother until she was complicit in his abuse. The day Mary put an end to it she left both of their blood on the walls of the family home. “I should have killed you that day,” she says but the attack just made him prouder of her because he trained her to be a killer and that fight meant she graduated with gold stars. When the conversation switches to Hanna, Gordon twists the knife a bit further and refers to her feelings for the young woman as the weakest part of her, but all she sees is a man who forced little girls to be killers. “Utrax works. It makes the world safer” he says, so he won’t apologize for destroying Hanna’s life. In fact, he explains how the kill list program works and why its fault rate of 1,000 to 1 is worth it. Marissa reminds him that statistical threats are not people, they are just numbers but the truth, according to him is they kill to prevent more killings in the future. Marissa knows all too well about the game of playing with fate and reminds him how it doesn’t seem to have the winning results they think it will, the innocent lives they took are proof of that. Gordon shrugs off those deaths and flips the script, offering her a job. The Leader of Utrax and a promise to give her total control of the program and guaranteed safety for Hanna. The two women can work side by side saving the world one target at a time. Marissa knows Hanna will never go for this, but Gordon thinks little Mary can be convincing. If all she wants is Hanna safe and an end to this madness than she might not have a choice. She has until midnight to make her decision, and if the answer is no, Gordon promises there will be consequences for her and others, namely, her precious Hanna.

Without much time, Marissa heads to the safe house and finds Sandy chained to a radiator and Hanna alive and well. When she learns the teen killer murdered Ethan’s pregnant fiancé, Marissa goes from relieved to homicidal. She pulls her gun, to execute the blonde, but changes course when she finds out Sandy is required to check in with a password every few hours. Instead of ending her nonsense once and for all, the Marissa hits her in the face with the barrel of her gun prompting Hanna and Ethan to fill her in on Max Kaplan (Gabriel Akuwudike). He is in Austria, and they know where his company car is parked. He keeps hopping in black government issued cars and Hanna and Marissa need to track him down before Gordon has him executed. The two women head to the last known place his car was spotted and as they wait, they talk about Abbas and his surprise daughter. Marissa, who isn’t used to this truthful version of Hanna, asks why she is telling her this. If they are going to rely on each other in these deadly missions, Hanna needs transparency and trust. She cuts Hanna short before she reveals where her love is hiding, claiming the less she knows the better, but she never reveals why. “No more secrets between us” Hanna says, and there goes Marissa lying about her meeting with Gordon and his offer. It isn’t long before they spot Max walking to his car and they follow him to an abandoned embassy, but like a ghost, he just disappears. They need to get inside, but how? The whole building is under surveillance. They get their break when in a café across the street, Hanna discovers a hidden tunnel below that would bypass the security cameras outside the embassy. They have their way in. Marissa calls Gordon to say they have a deal and on brand, he double crosses his daughter and sends Stapleton (Chloe Pirrie) and an armed group after her and Hanna with orders to kill the girl but bring Marissa back alive. Working like a dream team knowing they could be met with resistance at any moment, Marissa and Hanna seamlessly slip inside the armed fortress quietly picking off the security team one by one. They know the bulk of Stapleton’s goon squad is outside of the embassy looking for them, so they have 30 mins to clear the building, find Kaplan, and end this Pioneer nightmare once and for all.

When we catch up with John Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney) in Pioneer’s “Mothership” home base, Terri (Cherrelle Skeete) witnesses him being marched into a meeting with The Chairman. Gordon proceeds to force the recovered alcoholic to drink a toast, an entire glass of whiskey, for bringing Mary home. Once the amber liquid is down his gullet Gordon demands answers on how he got Marissa to turn against him. John tells them the truth, that his daughter was more than happy to go for Daddy’s throat, and this rubs Gordon the wrong way. He orders his goons to take John away, and from the looks of things kill him too. Terri overhears Stapleton calling for a cleaning crew, which can only mean one thing, so she flies into action. She manages to lie her way inside the room they’re holding by saying she was sent to finish his paperwork before the execution. She plays it cool but when the guard turns his back, she slips him a little knife and a bit of hope he might make it out of this alive.

THE KILL LIST CODE

While making their way through the embassy Hanna and Marissa run into Max Kaplan who attempts to cover up his role in this, but the second Ethan is brought up his lies fall apart. The two order him at gun point to lead them to the server room where we see hundreds of temperature regulating pools keeping it running. He explains how the algorithm he created tracks billions of people between the ages of 0-30 across the globe assigning them data points for their online activity. Every questionable online choice is a data point, painting a picture of who that person is becoming. As the data points add up the program has the ability to determine a threat assumption and decide who will be marked for termination. Marissa orders Kaplan to give her the backup hard drive with all of the targets the algorithms chose, but Max, as he secretly fingers an alarm butting beneath his laptop, says the best they could hope for would be a pause of Pioneer’s missions for 6 months, but it won’t end it forever. It could, however, give them enough time to let the press and the proper people in the justice department know what this rogue agency is up to.

Back to Ethan, who has been tasked with holding Sandy hostage. He is silently glaring at her from her chained to the radiator and grows increasingly volatile knowing she murdered his family. If the guilt of what she’s done is starting to kick in, she does a good job of covering it up because the second Ethan lets his guard down, she trips him and chokes him out with her legs. She breaks free from her handcuffs and calls Terri to issue a code red. Mia and Marissa captured her, and now they are coming for The Chairman.

Down in the server room, Hanna shoots out the thermal pools’ thermostats knowing the entire operation will shut down if the temperature fluctuates above or below 82°. With her gun trained on him, Marissa doesn’t notice Max reaching for the security alarm, but Hanna does and shoots him just as the temperature in the room start to reach a boiling point. Alarms ring out across the building and Hannah and Marissa have no choice but to run and leave the flooding server room in disarray and Max on the floor. They do manage to get the code and files onto a thumb drive before they have to flee, but Marissa isn’t leaving yet. She has one last job to do and hands Hanna the drive and asks her to trust her. From here, things go into full overdrive. Gordon gets the alert about Marissa and Mia Wolff, and he knows his daughter is coming for him. He walkies his security team to return to the embassy claiming it was a false flag set up. With things getting tense in the building, security tries to move John, but the knife Terri slipped him comes in handy and he slashes his way out of confinement and runs right into Marissa, who has no time to talk. She just single-handedly cleared the building now she is on the search for her father. A few floors away Mia overhears Stapleton on the walkie-talkie issuing orders to kill both her and Marissa on sight. This changes things for her since she actually cares for Marissa and doesn’t want to lose her. She makes the choice to head back into the building just as Stapleton’s goons find Max bleeding on the flooded server room floor.

FACING THE PAST

When Marissa does find her father, he is waiting, or at least his lit cigar is, and it triggers her into a flashback of the brutality he used to test her bravery. Cigar burns to push the limits of her pain is sick and speaks volumes about how this woman became the heartless agent we first met. She hears his voice from another room taunting her about being cursed with daughters, whom he refers to as his own form of punishment. His actions, he claims, weren’t cruel but his way of teaching the young Mary how to be strong in the face of torment was. He molded her into his soldier, and he is quite proud of himself for it. Like some maniacal puppeteer, he made sure they were all dancing from his strings. On that reveal, Marissa comes face to face with him just as Hanna enters the floor outside the boardroom, they are in. She overhears her disgusting father ask Marissa to prove her strength by executing him and calls her “Cookie” to really mess with her head. Hanna witnesses the whole toxic exchange including the abuse stuff. That’s when the lights go out the security team invades the floor. Gordon pulls his gun and shots ring out with Marissa taking cover and her father escaping out the side door. It is a full-scale shootout between the two highly trained female assassins and a whole building full of Pioneer’s security goons. In the chaos of the fight Hannah takes a bullet to the side; it’s just a flesh wound but it means she cannot run and is a hinderance to the escape plan. She orders Marissa to leave without her but this surrogate mother who has hated and loved this girl like her own flesh and blood, refuses to let her go. Hanna promises she will find a way to kill Gordon if Marissa promises to end this whole thing with the thumb drive. Begrudgingly she agrees and gives Hanna the address of a hotel in Paris. If she isn’t there, Marissa will come back for her. Then she kisses Hanna goodbye and takes off into the smoke from the flash. The bond between these two has grown into something neither of them was expecting. Not since Eric, who dedicated his life to protecting her, has there been someone willing to put Hanna first. Out of all the villainous film characters brought back to life on TV, Mireille Enos’s Marissa is a compelling transformation that has been deeply nuanced with a maternal love that outshines Cate Blanchett’s earlier and far eviler version of Weigler. Depth of character, seas of emotions, Marissa is drowning in layers of guilt, pain, PTSD, and a deeply seeded need for all of this pain to have a purpose. She finds that purpose in Hanna, and she is not about to give her up without a fight. With the help of Terri, she manages to escape just as Stapleton’s guards surround an injured Hanna. It looks like it might be up to Terri to deliver the drive to Ethan because Hanna isn’t making it to that hotel and Marissa is going to be forced to rescue her girl once again. Pioneer is no match for Wiegler.