Reactions: Hanna and Source Code

Joe Wright's Hanna is a curious, off-beat thriller that's absolutely winning. Wright's wealth of busy, fluid camera orchestrations and eccentric set-pieces are off-set by the tenderness of Saoirse Ronan's central performance and an odd, endearing mid-section of teenage self-discovery.
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It's true that the film has a good dose of folk tale smeared on top of its European spy-thriller template, but it's Wright's stunning compositions that bring it all home, along with a killer electronic Chemical Brothers score. 
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This isn't some bland, base Phillip Noyce vehicle - it's unique, inventive filmmaking. Along with Anton Corbijn's The American, Joe Wright's Hanna is another on-the-run espionage thriller that doesn't need any narrative tricks to pull in an audience - it's straight-forward storytelling delivered with precision and verve and style to spare. [A-]
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Meanwhile, Duncan Jones' Source Code is a cerebral science-fiction thriller that's as gripping as it is poignant. It works as a standard, straight-ahead mystery, a quantum physics mind-bender and a delicate, emotional journey of self-preservation.
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Like Moon, the director's previous debut film, it concerns a lead character who is faced with a crippling revelation that significantly alters his perception of reality and the ensuing emotion turmoil that comes along with accepting this fact. Both films are very much about what it means to be human.
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If not for a dodgy moment here or there and a few spoonfuls too many of schmaltz in the last act, I would have been doing cartwheels down the aisles, but as it stands, Source Code is an engaging, heady thriller that continues Jones' growing reputation as an intelligent craftsmen of small-scale science-fiction films. [B]