MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Hanna’s War’ Gives Trite Reading of a Saga That Deserves Better

“Hanna’s War” (citywide) is the World War II Resistance heroine saga at its most trite and ponderous. As a drama of the Holocaust, it seems all the more synthetic and uninspired in the light of the monumental accomplishments of “Shoah” or “Hotel Terminus.” And its credibility is not helped by its oddly assorted international cast, some of whom speak English hesitantly.

The Hanna of the title is a budding poet and intellectual, Hanna Senesh, a teen-age Hungarian Jew who left her country with the escalation of anti-Semitism in the late ‘30s to live on a kibbutz in Palestine. Toward the end of the war, Senesh joined the British Air Force so that she could eventually work in the Resistance in Hungary. Senesh and her comrades were naive and inexperienced, but there’s no questioning Hanna’s courage and the significance of her ultimate fate.

It is said that producer-director Menahem Golan--also its co-writer, with Hollywood veteran Stanley Mann--has wanted to film Hanna’s story for 23 years, and “Hanna’s War” is certainly impassioned.

But its telling goes wrong at every turn, starting with its lackluster dialogue. Dutch-born Maruschka Detmers, who made a highly sensual impression in Godard’s “Prenom: Carmen” and Bellochio’s “Devil in the Flesh,” acts all over the place as the headstrong Hanna, yet she never brings her to life.

Even though Ellen Burstyn manages an acceptable Hungarian accent, she hasn’t the slightest resemblance to the dark, intense Detmers, and it’s hard to believe she could be Hanna’s mother. Typical of the film’s obviousness is the casting of Donald Pleasence and David Warner as Hanna’s tormentors, and they are not required to do anything more than their overly familiar villain turns. (You do have to give Pleasence credit for working up so much sheer repulsiveness.) Anthony Andrews hams it up in a brief stint as a Scottish squadron leader in the Royal Air Force.

The film, which lasts a punishing 2 1/2 hours, flattens inherent ironies and complexities in Hanna’s story, which deserves a far better film. Nothing helps “Hanna’s War” (whose PG-13 rating is mild, considering the scenes of protracted torture): The cinematography is more ripe than eloquent and the score grandiose in the extreme.

‘HANNA’S WAR’

A Canon release of a Golan-Globus production. Producers Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus. Director Golan. Screenplay Golan, Stanley Mann; based on the diaries of Hanna Senesh and “A Great Wind Cometh” by Yoel Palgi. Camera Elemer Ragalyi. Music Dov Seltzer. Associate producer Carlos Gil. Art director Tividar Bertalan. Costumes John Mollo. Second unit camera Gabor Szabo. Film editor Alain Jakubowicz. With Ellen Burstyn, Maruschka Detmers, Anthony Andrews, Donald Pleasence, David Warner, Vincenzo Ricotta.

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned; some material may be inappropriate for children younger than 13).