Anna (Review)
Anna is a Paint By Numbers Luc Besson Film.
Once upon a time writer/director Luc Besson used to make wonderful movies like The Fifth Element and Leon: The Professional. However, Anna proves that those times are long behind us. While I used to argue that he made movies about strong female protagonists, now they seem more like excuses for him to work with some of the most beautiful women in the world. In the past, he’s worked with women such as Mila Jovovich, Rie Rasmussen, and Cara Delevingne, and now he’s taken Sasha Luss and put her on the big screen in her first starring role. The problem is that he surrounds this fledgling actress with the likes of Cillian Murphy, Luke Evans, and Helen Mirren which puts her dangerously out of her depth. That though isn’t the only reason why Anna is a complete dumpster fire of a movie.
Besson loves to tell stories about characters that could mop the floor with anyone they come across. He did this in The Transporter, Taken, and Colombiana. So, of course, he does this again with Anna, which tells the tale of a domestic abuse victim turned elite KGB operative. Sure sounds pretty empowering at first, but Anna must use her incredible good looks to complete most of her missions by going undercover as an international model. So, she is a supermodel/super government assassin, which sounds like the dumbest possible cover you could ever give to someone that’s meant to be inconspicuous. After all, it’s kind of hard to vanish into a crowd when your photo is on the cover of magazines or billboards. This though doesn’t stop her from being the best the KGB has ever seen and setting her firmly in the sights of the CIA.
Incredibly stupid plot aside, Anna is a narrative mess. Besson constantly shuffles back and forth on the film’s timeline. In the first ten minutes or so, the film jumps five years into the future and then three years into the past. This is all an attempt to flesh out Anna’s background at first, but it slowly turns into a crutch where Besson shows that what you think is happening didn’t really happen. This primarily comes into effect when Anna reluctantly becomes a double agent for the CIA in the hopes of finally becoming free from the KGB. The issues is that this method prevents Anna from ever becoming the taut action thriller it wishes it could be. Revealing after we’ve seen Anna that she was juggling a number of balls in the air in order not to be discovered prevents us from really caring because we’ve already seen her succeed.
I will say that Sasha Luss isn’t that bad in the film. She has the kind of intensity to her that most glamour models are so skilled at conveying. This makes her perfect for scenes when she’s playing super spy/ assassin Anna, when she’s trying to play a more human version of her character though she falters. Now, this wouldn’t be quite so evident, but Besson surrounded her with some pretty capable actors. Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy play rival handlers from the KGB and CIA trying to keep a firm handle on their asset. Of course, this being a movie about a strong female protagonist (at least Besson’s definition of one) she quickly seduces and sleeps with both of them. She doesn’t do this with Mirren though who plays a tough as nails KGB war horse who mentors Anna and assigns her missions. Mirren is actually pretty impressive and manages to disappear into the role, but then again doesn’t she always.
Anna is a film that is quite simply filled with goofs and plot holes. For one, the film takes place in the mid t80s to 1990 (hard to tell with all the constant jumping back and forth on the timeline). However, it’s filled with things like cell phones, flash drives, and the internet (wifi even), all of which were only the stuff of science fiction back in those days. Of course, we could argue that these are super spies so maybe they had access to it, but that doesn’t resolve a number of the issues with the plot. Murphy is a CIA agent who is smart enough to figure out Anna works for the KGB and pin a number of murders on her, but dumb enough to be seduced by her and believe that she actually loves him. The same goes for Luke Evan’s character. Now, there’s no arguing that Anna isn’t beautiful, but to seduce two men who know that this is what she does for a living seems a bit too convenient. Then again, Anna is a film where things constantly seem to conveniently and inexplicably work out for the character. While I might have said Luss wasn’t bad, there’s no way she has the charisma to make us believe she can pull off all the things she does.
Sure, Anna has some pretty cool gunfights and action sequences. However, these are few and far between given how incredibly long the film is. The thing is that while Anna might seem like exactly like the kind of film that Besson has done so well so many times before, that’s exactly what it’s the biggest problem is. We’ve seen this all before and we’ve seen it done better. There’s nothing that makes Anna stand out and the only thing I that really stuck with me is just how sloppy the story was overall. Even with some of the more high octane moments, I found myself bored with this uninspired mess of a spy flick.
