Anna, written and directed by Luc Besson - 7 out of 10

Anna, written and directed by Luc Besson
7 out of 10


Before the much better Red Sparrow, not least because Jennifer Lawrence is way ahead of Sasha Luss, one of the most talented professionals of the present, Luc Besson has thrilled audiences with Nikita.

Alas, Anna is rather far from the previous, more accomplished work and critics seem to agree on that.
Witness the Metascore of 40 and the unfavorable reception.
It may be due to fatigue, for we have so many movies now that all offer fights, many bodies, infatuated protagonists, skilled heroes and heroines.

Anna Poliatova aka Sasha Luss is thus not that different from the other characters we have seen in battle and bed with the evil and sometimes the good.
Indeed, the scene where she is inviting two lovers, one Russian and one American, evidently KGB and CIA, to sit together and see how they can help her overcome insurmountable odds is perhaps original.

But it is one of the few, if not the only one that avoids the sense of deja vu.
Anna comes from a broken family, and the Russian ruthless secret service takes advantage of that.

Just like The Red Sparrow, she is enrolled in a school where she learns to kill, deceive and presumably use Polonium on designated targets...say Litvinenko in London.
The last act is not from this film, the loathsome Russian leaders, Putin himself surely, have ordered that in real life.

The protagonist is so good that she kills ...how many was that? Thirty? Supposedly good security guards, bare handed and in about six minutes
Now this is still a problem, for the most cruel Olga aka Helen Mirren, perhaps the equivalent of Q from the James Bond series, only placed high in the KGB, had given a time limit of just five minutes.

It all seems to preposterous and surreal, although we are so used with the impossible achievements of the superheroes we keep seeing on the screens that perhaps we would allow for the exploits of a human being that does witchcraft.
After all, can you believe that Trump is the leader of the free world and not some villain from a fictional story?

There are other problems with Anna though and the fact that it is not credible may be the least of them.
Sasha Luss may have a great career ahead, but she is not overwhelming here.

Others seem to be just as flawed or worse...Lera Abova for instance.
On the other hand, they may have just played it the way Luc Besson required.

And it could be the perfect manner, if the idea is to have awkward, bizarre personages in peculiar situations, which is what we have in the story.
For this cinephile it was almost a disaster though.