Hollywood is always looking to build a better assassin*, whether it’s Angelina Jolie’s Evelyn Salt, the old eliminators in “Red,” or Jason Bourne.

    But this film’s angle? A teenager trained since birth to be a killing machine? It isn’t as fresh as it thinks it is.

    The movie takes elements of “La Femme Nikita” and Natalie Portman in “The Professional,” along with parts of the comic-book girls who’ve wielded* weapons at the multiplex (take your pick, there have been several in the past year) and plunks* it all down in a not-very-brave new world.

    Living alone with her ex-CIA agent father (Eric Bana) in an electricity-free cabin far up in the mountains of Finland, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) shoots an elk* in the face the way most kids use Facebook. She can outmaneuver* and outrun her old pop before taking a break to learn from the only book they have in their cabin, an encyclopedia*.

    Then Hanna chooses to alert the very person she and her dad have been training to battle: A matronly* murderer named Marissa (Cate Blanchett) whose Texas accent and business suits make her look like Tootsie* with a deadly twist.

    Marissa and her team of goons* — including one fellow who likes track suits — catch up to Hanna and take her to Morocco for interrogation. But she escapes and hides with a family of hippies, learning a little about a world she never knew existed before she has to get back to head-smashing.

    The forced coming-of-age parable* that filmmaker Joe Wright laces with fairy-tale symbolism is heavy-handed from the beginning.

    The director of the stately “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” works extra hard to get in touch with his inner Luc Besson*, but for all the jacked-up violence and super DNA backstory, this is still a movie where one guy is surrounded by five thugs* who take turns throwing punches until someone thinks to finally take out a knife.

       (SD-Agencies)