ReelBob: ‘For Hannah’ ★★½

By Bob Bloom

“For Hannah” is a quirky independent thriller about a bank robber with a heart, a husband without one and a wife with a spine she keeps under wraps.

It’s Christmas Eve 1987 and the bank in the small town of Pine Ridge has not only been robbed but burned to the ground.

Frank (Ric Morgan) and his wife, Emma (Carla Abruzzo), are preparing to sit down for dinner. Well, at least Frank is. Like some lord of the manor, he waits for Emma to serve him his steak medium rare, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. He passes on Emma’s green beans, which was her mother’s recipe.

Emma also pours her husband a glass of wine before sitting down but jumps right up to refill his glass after he empties it.

From the outset, writer-director John Wesley Norton, adapting a story by Shannon Brown, sets the tone for the couple’s dynamic.

The couple’s dinner is interrupted by an armed and menacing man who needs a place to lie low from the law. Later, we learn his name is Chance (Brown) and he indeed robbed the town’s bank. The fire was accidental, caused when Chance mishandled his blowtorch.

As the movie progresses, your sympathies shift along with it. Frank, it turns out, is a scumbag who launders — and skims — money from the local mobster-run casino.

Chance is not the bad man he pretends to be. He robbed the bank to get money for his niece, Hannah, who needs an operation.

And Emma, well, despite Chance being a wanted man, she comes to regard him as a better man than Frank.

The main problems with “For Hannah” are that it’s tonally erratic, shifting from comedy to romance to violent thriller, and, at 112 minutes, it could have used some trims, especially those focusing on Cooper (Bruce Spielbauer), the town’s sheriff, who — because he is going to retire in eight days — sees the bank robbery as a major inconvenience and the ambitious Deputy Gale (Suzette Brown) who one day wants to succeed him.

Beside that “For Hannah” is a nifty little film that has its moments, but sometimes fails to coalesce.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.

FOR HANNAH
2½ stars out of 4
Not rated, language, violence, sexual content, partial nudity