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Article by Nathan Hurlbut
French film director Luc Besson had a surprise hit five years ago with “Lucy” (2014), a movie starring Scarlett Johansson as a woman who gains psychic super powers after she accidentally ingests a powerful synthetic drug. It ended up as one of the top twenty-five grossing films for that year, and became the biggest box-office success of the director’s four-decade long career.
Perhaps in an attempt to repeat such success, Besson returns this year with “Anna,” a film similarly titled after its female main character (down to another four-letter name). The results this time, however, are sure to be much more modest.
Anna (Sasha Luss) is a desperate young woman in an abusive relationship living on the fringes of Russian society. She has reached the low point of her life when a mysterious stranger Alex (Luke Evans) recruits her to become an assassin for the KGB. She is given the promise of a five-year career by her superior Olga (Helen Mirren) followed by release from her duties, a promise that eventually turns out to be a lie. Using her cover as a fashion model, Anna realizes she must find a way to outwit her employers and escape her current predicament or die trying.
The main problem with “Anna” is that Besson already made this movie almost thirty years ago, and it was called “La Femme Nikita” (1990). The plot of “Anna” possesses so many reminders of that superior film, you would think that Besson, after being dissatisfied with the American version “Point of No Return” (1993), decided to do his own remake. “Anna” is even set during the same time period of “Nikita’s” release, further suggesting Besson is merely reliving past glories here, and miring his film in a pervasive sense of nostalgia.
The main difference he brings to this movie is a relentless juggling of chronology to the film’s events. These early surprise plot twists accompanied by a jump in time period certainly start off promisingly, jolting the story to life before it settles into an overly familiar groove. However, the closer we creep towards the movie’s conclusion, the more obvious these narrative jumps become, eventually wearing out their welcome. In retrospect, they appear more like an attempt to disguise how straightforward and routine the plot actually is.
The movie is certainly gorgeous to look at, and Sasha Luss makes for a strikingly beautiful title character. Luss’s previous experience as a supermodel makes Anna’s cover as a fashion model believable enough, and Besson obviously tailored his script specifically to his lead actress’s particular talents. However, just as the fashion world often favors appearances to a superficial degree, Besson can similarly succumb to flashy visual style over substance in his films, and this movie specifically falls prey to such flaws.
Luss also fails to bring the level of screen presence to the movie that more accomplished actresses like Scarlett Johansson, Anna Parrilaud, or even a young Natalie Portman (1995’s “The Professional”) possess. Instead, she merely brings a level of competency to her role without achieve anything particularly memorable, and the film seems destined to suffer a similar fate.
The movie does feature some fantastic action set pieces, the most impressive being a restaurant scene where Anna walks into the establishment with an unloaded weapon. She is forced to rely on her wits and fighting skills to not only finish the hit job she was entrusted with, but escape the situation with her life intact. It’s here that the movie really comes alive, with Besson showing his usual dexterity with action sequences, as he inventively uses the specific setting to create an exhilarating experience. It is unfortunate, then, that this scene remains an early peak for the movie. Aside from an opening scene that is equally thrilling, the rest of the action we see here is more routine than inspired.
The best you can say for “Anna” is that it plays like a greatest hits package of director Luc Besson’s personal style. Anyone unfamiliar with his previous films could easily be seduced by this movie’s striking visuals, glamorous settings, and dynamic action scenes. However, those of us who know what Besson is capable of as a filmmaker may recognize “Anna” as territory that is all too familiar.
Rated R.