Movie Review: Anna, Directed by Luc Besson

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Able to disembowel bodyguards twice her size with broken dinner plates, blonde bombshell Anna (Sasha Luss) is a down and out druggie with an abusive boyfriend turned Russian KGB assassin posing as a fashion model. Anna is an unequivocally excellent marksman at short range. Runway model in stature, but with kicking power that can send men twice her size flying across hotel dining rooms.

Written and directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Lucy), Anna is no Atomic Blonde or Red Sparrow. Russian supermodel Luss has negligible acting experience prior to Anna, and this is particularly evident when she turns from cold-faced killer to shedding a tear, desperate for a better life.

Don’t let the calibre of other cast members fool you into thinking there has to be some substance somewhere in all this style. Oscar-winning Helen Mirren can’t save Anna from being more than a light-hearted, sexy action flick, relying on the physical beauty of fashion models and the charm of handsome actors Cillian Murphy and Luke Evans. There is also gorgeous French and Italian architecture thrown in as necessity. Mirren plays the high-ranking KGB officer Olga, impassive in her kill orders until her final scene in which her career satisfaction as a spy who loves death is imbued in a smirk. Evans plays Anna’s KGB handler turned lover, with Murphy playing his equally enamoured CIA counterpart Lenny.

You certainly would not watch this for the dialogue. It doesn’t go much further than “my freedom” being the response to “what do you want most in the world?” The odd laugh comes from Anna’s shallow fatuousness. Her model girlfriend Maud (Lera Abova) poolside in the Bahamas, rebuffs the approach of a man in speedos (which you only see from the midriff down) saying, “Unless you’re a billionaire – walk on.” Abova’s acting ability exceeds Luss’s, which isn’t saying much.

Predictable duplicity and dead agents abound. Anna is uncomplicated junk food for the action fan.

~Andy Baker

Andy Baker
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