Tag: Joel Kinnaman

Hanna Season 1 Episode 8: Utrax Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

Hanna S1Ep8 Hanna & 249 in Field

Hanna season 1 reaches its conclusion with episode 8, Utrax, which takes place at the Romanian facility where Hanna was born and where the program was restarted after Marissa helped shut it down. Erik and Marissa continue to face their pasts while Hanna learns more details about who she is. Marissa and Sawyer face off. Erik and Hanna attempt to set the new trainees free, but there are complications.

Recap

Episode 8 begins with the trainees still in lockdown at the Utrax facility. As they sit on their beds and fidget, the voice on the loudspeaker reminds them of the rules: Stay in their rooms. Stay away from the windows. They’ll be told when the lockdown is over. Even the most obedient of the girls is growing anxious from sitting still too long.

249 goes to the window and listens to a conversation between two guards in a room on the other side of the courtyard. One tells the other that something went wrong during the operation at the motel, she can’t find Sawyer, and they’ve lost Erik and Hanna. She doesn’t know what’s currently happening out in the field.

After their triumphant exit from the motel, Erik and Hanna have paused somewhere in the woods for Hanna to remove a bullet from Erik’s arm, using a knife and her teeth. She catches a rabbit with her bare hands for their breakfast.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 8: Utrax Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 7: Road Recap

~ Metacrone

mv5bogy4mgu5ymitywe4mi00odjjlwjkywytmjgxyzk2njnkmmizxkeyxkfqcgdeqxvynjkwnzewmzu40._v1_sy1000_sx1500_al_

“The road is my home; my home, the road.”- Hedwig Robinson.

Episode 7 of Hanna, Road, brings Erik and Hanna back together for a nostalgia filled road trip. They each visit a birth parent and discover that the road is their home now and they are each other’s family. To be together, they must be on the run, but that’s likely Hanna’s fate no matter what, now that they know what she looks like.

Marissa also continues to confront truths about herself, the road and family. She has a reunion with Erik at the hotel where he and Johanna brought Hanna when she was an infant. Marissa proves once again that she’s meant to do more than work 9 to 5 and be a Parisian housewife.

While I’ve enjoyed the Sophie interludes, Hanna is at its best when its 3 leads are together in some combination. This episode might be the best episode of the season for overall character development. So many secret truths are revealed and so much of Erik, Marissa and Johanna’s pasts are explored. Hanna learns more about herself than she has all season, both factually and genetically. All three leads face moments of truth that will define them from here on. Hanna has been renewed for season 2, so that’s a more meaningful statement than it would have been a week ago.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 7: Road Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 6: Mother Recap

~ Metacrone

Hanna S1Ep6 Erik, Marissa & Hanna in Elevator.png

Episode 6, Mother, reunites Hanna and Erik. But first, Erik is held prisoner by Sawyer and tortured, while Hanna has a fight with Sophie, then agrees to leave quietly with Marissa as her daughter/prisoner. There are some good character moments and fun action scenes, plus a major reveal. But the main reasons for this episode are to give Marissa and Hanna a chance to meet face to face at last and to move everyone toward their place for the final two episodes.

Recap

The episode opens on Sawyer visiting Erik in the basement dungeon where he’s keeping Erik nearly naked, on the floor, with an air conditioner blowing on him. The torture is made worse by throwing buckets of cold water on him at frequent intervals.

Sawyer wants to know where Hanna is. So does Erik. “I don’t know where she is because she didn’t tell me. She’s smarter than all of us. Don’t look so surprised. You made her that way.”

Sawyer is really nothing more than a glorified flunky with an out of control ego. Definitely not part of the team that made Hanna. Probably hasn’t even bothered to read the file. He’s gotten lucky so far. Marissa is the smart one, and I don’t think that Hanna actually is smarter than her. That makes me wonder, again, if Marissa is an early prototype for the Utrax project.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 6: Mother Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 5: Town Recap

~ Metacrone

Hanna S1Ep5 Party Hanna

In episode 5, Hanna has made it to London and is hiding out in Sophie’s garage, sleeping in the family’s camper van. She’s thrown head first into the deep end of normal teenage social life in this episode, which she does her best to navigate. Between her sheltered upbringing and her heightened responses due to her manipulated DNA, she has a tougher time than most girls her age. As always, Hanna’s common sense and abilities also come in handy when she needs to read people or defend herself.

Both Hanna and Erik struggle to deal with the consequences of Hanna’s discoveries about her background. Erik is seriously wounded, which stops him from searching for Hanna, leaving him in despair. Hanna is depressed, grieving the relationship she thought she had with Erik.

Sawyer and Marissa develop a power struggle over the case. Sawyer continues to use heavy-handed methods and takes Marissa off the case, despite the depth of her experience with Erik. As usual, Marissa takes matters into her own hands.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 5: Town Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 4: Father Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

Hanna S1Ep4 Hanna & Dieter Drink Turkish Coffee and Discuss Fear

Episode 4 finally brings Erik and Marissa (Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos) together for an extended confrontation. While Erik holds Marissa hostage and they reflect on their shared history and the ramifications of Erik’s decision to rescue Hanna as an infant, Dieter brings Hanna home to stay with his family. She’s exposed to another version of a typical family, this one functional and happy, with a very involved, kind-hearted father.

She’s also exposed to a range attitudes about her father, including the skewed information Marissa has fed the public. Hanna begins to question who Erik is to her and who she wants him to be.

Recap

After rescuing her from the chaos of the fighting, Dieter brings Hanna to his family home to stay with him for a couple of days, until things settle down. He introduces her to his sons, Armin and Bijan. The police search the area around the hotel, looking for Erik and his gang. Jacobs and his main henchman, Costigan, return to their hotel room, where they find the story is all over the news, with Erik Heller given as the suspect in the murder of Lukas Taylor.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 4: Father Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 3: City Recap

~ Metacrone

Hanna S1Ep3 Erik & Marissa 2005

As befits an episode called “City”, episode 3 of Hanna picks up the storytelling pace and keeps the characters in motion. Hanna and Erik are reunited and must work together against their nemesis, Marissa, who finally gets enough screen time in this episode for character building and to reveal her backstory with Erik. The episode also has some parallels with episode 2, as Hanna is thrown into another established, troubled family. In this episode they work with Erik’s old Army gang, where she’s again relegated to the role of child, even though she’s much more than that.

Recap

Hanna’s train pulls into Berlin, as Jacobs visits Sophie’s family to question them about her. He falsely claims that Hanna’s mother is alive and has asked him to find her daughter, because Hanna’s father, who she’s been staying with, is dangerous and unstable. Then he shows the family a photo of the two guards Erik killed on the Polish-German border.

Since the family don’t know they’re in an action-suspense series and this sort of thing is to be expected, it’s very upsetting for them. Jacobs and the family all keep pushing Sophie for any information she might be holding back, out of loyalty to Hanna.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 3: City Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 2: Friend Recap

~ Metacrone
Hanna S1Ep2 Sophie & Hanna in the Morrocan Desert
Sophie & Hanna in the Moroccan Desert

My recap of episode 1 is HERE.

I knew episode 2 would be very different from episode 1, Forest, since Hanna’s previous life has been broken beyond repair. But after waiting a month and a half for the next installment, the image that was stuck in my mind from the first episode was the tall, forbidding forest and dark, imposing cave Hanna was raised in. I expected episode 2 to show her escape and the beginning of her education in the wider world.

And it does. It’s a splash of immersion into the life of a typical 21st century teenage girl, which only serves to highlight how out of touch Hanna is with not only her peers, but everything in our busy, urban, mechanized world. You know from the moment you see Hanna’s future friend, Sophie, covered by a dog filter app, that there’s no way Erik Heller could prepare Hanna for this. She’s on her own in the modern world, and will have to sink or swim based on how quickly she can adapt.

Sophie looks like she’ll be an excellent wing-girl to Hanna as she adjusts.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 2: Friend Recap” →

Hanna Season 1 Episode 1: Forest Review and Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

 

The rest of my Hanna recaps are HERE.

The pilot of Hanna was available for 24 hours after the Super Bowl, in early February. I wrote this review and recap then, 6 weeks before the rest of the season dropped. As far as I can tell, the pilot wasn’t changed.

Review

Hanna is an Amazon Prime original series which is based on the 2011 film of the same name. The series stars stars Esme Creed-Miles as Hanna, a 15 year old girl who’s been raised alone in the woods by her father and trained to be a survivalist and fighter; Joel Kinnaman as Erik Heller, Hanna’s father and a former agent who took his infant daughter on the run to escape the relentless pursuit which killed Hanna’s mother; and Mireille Enos as Marissa Wiegler, a rogue CIA agent who’s been hunting Heller and his family for many years and will stop at nothing to find them.

Amazon is advertising the story as “equal parts high-concept thriller and coming-of-age drama”. I can’t help but notice the similarities to Les Miserables and the Jean Valjean/ Cosette/ Javert storyline, one of my favorite stories of all time. In this version, Cosette is the star, and gets to show what she’s made of.

But, never fear, if you don’t like 19th century French literature or operatic 80s musicals. This is a thoroughly modern action-mystery-thriller in the vein of Hunger Games or Nikita. Hanna has been trained by her father since birth and has extraordinary talents, but she doesn’t know who she is to the outside world, or why she’s being hunted. Her father has kept her sheltered from the rest of humanity, but has taught her as much as he could about the world from their cave in the forest.

Continue reading “Hanna Season 1 Episode 1: Forest Review and Recap” →

Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 10: The Killers Recap

~ Metacrone

AC110TakvRei

It’s time for Tak and Rei to work out their sibling rivalry issues. In episode 9, Tak got Rei to confess to driving Laurens to temporary suicide, which solved the bulk of the season’s mysteries. But there are still a few new revelations in this episode, along with the big, season-ending battle between the good guys and the bad guys, which everyone takes part in.

Kristin climbs the stairs to her brother’s apartment. She finds him lying dead on the floor, just as Leung left him. She reaches for her gun, but doesn’t have it, so she picks up a candlestick and follows the sounds of gunshots to the boys’ room. There she finds the boys both dead, laid out on the floor in a growing pool of their own blood, partially hidden behind a couch.

She drops the candlestick in shock and starts to panic, but then she hears her mother’s voice. She searches the house until she finds Alazne, who falls into her arms, bloody and dying. As Alazne is dropping to the floor, she warns Kristin, “He’s behind you!”

Continue reading “Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 10: The Killers Recap” →

Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 9: Rage in Heaven Recap

~ Metacrone

AC109Rei

Episode 9 is a dark episode, arguably the darkest of the season. But we also hear the real solution to Bancroft’s mystery from the person who orchestrated his evening, so at least there’s closure amidst the real death, betrayal, and disturbing fetishes.

The episode begins with another brief fast forward, this time with two hands playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

In the present time, Tak sits at Poe’s bar while Poe examine’s Tak’s pardon. Poe pronounces the pardon exceptionally thorough, which is a welcome surprise. Tak says he knows what really happened to Bancroft, but Poe doesn’t take the bait.

Poe’s feeling a little pissy about Tak putting the entire gang in danger and making Poe kill a fellow AI, in order to give Laurens a solution that was a lie. Tak notes that the dead AI was no great loss, and he wanted to turn Lizzie into a sex slave. Poe comments that no one is ever going to hurt his little girl again.

Continue reading “Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 9: Rage in Heaven Recap” →