FOR director Joe Wright, writers Seth Lochhead and David Farr have confected a screenplay combining scientific fantasy, a teenaged secret agent, a bunch of real nasty US Government field persons and a chase movie from the European Arctic to Morocco and Germany where it terminates in a derelict amusement park.

16-year-old Hanna (Saiorse Ronan) has grown up in a log house in the Arctic where her father Erik (Eric Bana) has educated her to be fluent in numerous useful languages, a crack shot with rifle, pistol and bow, deadly in unarmed combat, a brilliant scholar in a constricted curriculum and a brilliant athlete unhindered by fear.

Hanna is unaware that she is the only surviving evidence of a genetic modification experiment initiated by the CIA whose deputy director Marissa (Cate Blanchett having visible fun wearing a ginger wig and overplaying sinisterness) is determined to obliterate.

Hanna’s innocence is an ongoing reason to fear for her welfare in a world where lights appear at the touch of a button and food comes in a packet, where men are not automatically protective of her, where nothing is as she understands from a tough but idyllic childhood.

A teenaged girl achieving so much secret agent stuff with so few resources is a refreshing change from gadget-crammed action movies with bloke heroes needing help to survive.

At all cinemas