Weekly Inspiration: Hanna

Earlier this year a movie came out that immediately became one of my favorites.  (Mike, you may want to look away).

I can't help it - I love movies with badass female protagonists.  And Hanna is the ultimate badass.  A sixteen-year-old girl trained (and genetically engineered) to be the perfect assassin, Hanna finally leaves her life in the woods to come face to face with the woman who tried to wipe out her entire family when she was a baby.  Cate Blanchett (who I also love) is such a fabulous villain in this movie, with her perfect auburn bob and her green suede Prada shoes.  Eric Bana plays Hanna's father, who has spent years training Hanna to be a killer instead of acting like her father (once you know the stakes, you can't really blame him).

The scene where Hanna escapes from the CIA is AWESOME.  It reminds me of The Fifth Element meets Run Lola Run (two of my other favorite badass chick movies).

Hanna goes on to hitch a ride with a British family on vacation in Morocco and eventually makes her way to Germany to meet her father.  Of course everything goes totally haywire, thanks to the b*tch with the perfect red hair.  Good people die, bad people die, and Hanna gets an awesome closing line.  What's not to love?  By the end of the film I wanted to bleach my eyebrows and get a perm. 

But mostly, I was inspired by Saoirse Ronan.  What an amazing actress, and this role is entirely different from her roles in Atonement and The Lovely Bones.  I was so inspired that I based the main character of my novel, Friday, on Saoirse.  If by some miracle my book ever got made into a movie, she would be Friday (except she'd probably be way too old by then, but regardless...).

And on that note, better get back to work.  I have a henchgirl's attempted murder scene to write, and NaNoReviMo is well under way!