Luc Besson’s new film Anna came and probably will be gone in about fifteen minutes. This new film is about woman turned into an assassin… and Besson’s earliest films include La Femme Nikita and Leon: The Professional… so this is kind of him going back to the well after his last flick, Velerian and the City of a Thousand Planets didn’t do so well. Unfortunately, this flick is only a shadow of both better and equally bad recent movies with similar plots.
Anna is about a Russian woman recruited by the KGB to be a French fashion model by day, international spy and assassin (and honey pot) by night. She’s an addict who comes from nothing and is suicidal so she takes the offer but soon regrets it. The film involves dueling spy agencies, high fashion, betrayals, murder, double agents, double – and triple – crosses. She wants out, but various factions want to keep her in.
The movie has the same basic setup as the equally bad Red Sparrow which also involved a KGB spy in the recent past. Also a little bit like the superior Atomic Blonde… and all three movies are just repeating better (and worse) spy movies of the past. Which doesn’t mean Anna is a bad movie, just highly derivative.
But, unfortunately, Anna IS a bad movie. It starts with an actress who either doesn’t have a lot of range or, more likely, was directed to be a cold emotionless ice woman. And what other kind of character can you root for than an emotionless automoton? But that’d be workable if the movie wasn’t just so lifeless. There’s one pretty great action scene in a restaurant that was fully spoiled in the trailers and another in KGB headquarters but most of the movie is dull conversations or repetitive montages of high fashion mixed with murder.
It doesn’t help that the film is so in love with its twisty plot that it can’t help but try to surprise us using constant flashbacks to “what’s really going on”. As in there’s a sudden on-screen reversal / surprise and then we get a “two weeks earlier” title card. It does this a half dozen times and it gets very old, very quick.
Now, the movie would be an utter disaster if it didn’t have a surprisingly good sequence involving CIA and KGB agents in the same place at the same time. It’s the only time a wicked sense of fun lights up the screen… and it’s depressing it involves co-stars Cilian Murphy and Luke Evans but not the lead (Sasha Luss). This spy vs. spy sequence is fun and has, if not a good surprise, at least a surprise that made me smile.
For the single reason the rest of the slog of a flick built up to this enjoyable sequence, I’m not burying the film. Even though I certainly can’t recommend it to anyone. Unless you just love spy movie set during (and after) the cold war. Everyone else can bother with a dozen other, better movies.
Score: 63