Anna is a 2019 action movie about an assassin who also works as a fashion model.
In the 80’s during the cold war, a KGB agent is killed by American spies. Cut to years later when a young Russian woman named Anna (Sasha Luss) is discovered by an agent and flown to Paris to be the next top model. On her first day she meets a woman she really likes named Maud (Lera Abova) and a man who she takes to bed right away. The next morning she shoots the man point blank and we flashback three years before to discover that Anna was a poor women with an abusive boyfriend. Enter KGB agent Alex (Luke Evans), who shows up and offers Anna a way out of her current life. Become an assassin.
Anna is a mess, which is a shame because this could be a fun B movie action flick. The plot is all over the place and it’s often difficult to understand what the story is about. During once scene, for example, Anna is doing a job for the KGB, assassinating a target. The movie then goes back to the same event and this time shows you that she was actually being infiltrated by the CIA and forced to work for them. Anna than starts a relationship with CIA agent Lenny (Cillian Murphy) as well as Alex from the KGB, too. So yes, it’s clear she is playing both sides but we never know what her end game is. The movie does a lot of playing out a sequence in hoping to develop the story, only to have it be replayed later to show you what really happened. Unintentionally, it kind of reminds me of those three alternate endings in Clue. Here’s one way it could have happened but now here’s what really happened.
Anna claims it takes place in the 80s but I never got any sense of authenticity. The music, the fashion, etc., makes it look like it was early 2000s. Then again, the movie jumps around with time so much, I wouldn’t be surprised if characters didn’t go back to the late 50s too. If this took place during the cold war of the 80s, it would have been fun to comment on how Russians vs Americans were perceived in comparison to how it is today. That doesn’t happen.
Director Luc Besson has made many iconic movies in his early career. La Femme Nikita became the blueprint for female assassin features. Leon aka The Professional had an acclaimed performance by a young Natalie Portman in her film debut. And seeing that Besson was teaming up with the same composer (Eric Sera) and cinematographer (Thierry Arbogast), I was expecting Anna to be an homage to his older films. Heck, I wouldn’t even mind if it looked more like his later sleeker looking flicks, including Lucy.
The only two actors of note in this are Helen Mirren as Anna’s boss Olga, and Abova as her lover Maud. They are the only two actors whose characters who seem genuine. If Anna had a better plot structure or even better action sequences, I could find something about this to sell you on, but sadly I cannot.