Anna Review

I think I was the only person on Earth excited for this movie. Based off of box office totals this past weekend, I also think I was only one of 10 people who made the trip out to see it. Truth be told, I didn't know of its existence until I was going through my summer movie predictions in late April. I stumbled upon this "Anna" movie and was like, "What is this?" I looked it up, watched a trailer, and immediately became very intrigued. It was a female-led action film directed by Luc Besson. Sure, not everything this guy touches turns to gold, as evidenced by the atrocious mess that was "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," but he did direct "Léon: The Professional" in 1994, which is No. 30 on IMDb's top 250. He also directed "The Fifth Element" in 1997 and, more recently, "Lucy" in 2014. In addition to that, he's also stood as producer of franchises like "Taken" and "The Transporter," so this guy seems to know his way around action films. Given that I was one of the people who actually enjoyed "Lucy," I was excited to see his take on another female-led action movie named after the first name of its lead protagonist. My other option from this past weekend's openers after seeing "Toy Story 4" was "Child's Play." Since I've never seen any of those movies, this seemed like a better idea.

Speaking of my summer predictions regarding "Anna," I felt fairly confident that this could pull off $45 million domestically. Perhaps it could snag an opening weekend of $15-18 million and hold on well enough through the summer to hit that $45 million mark. I came upon that number after looking at other recent female-led action films like "Atomic Blonde" ($51.7 million) and "Red Sparrow" ($46.9 million). Even the first "John Wick" movie came out of nowhere to do $43 million. Obviously "Anna" wasn't going to perform like "Lucy," which OPENED to $43.9 million and made $126.7 million total, to go along with $463.4 million worldwide. But certainly with a decent enough advertising campaign the movie could match "Atomic Blonde" and "Red Sparrow," right? But that's the funny thing about early predictions. There's a lot of factors that go into a movie's box office total that are sometimes hard to know of that far in advance. In the case of "Anna," I had no idea back in April that they would decide to NOT advertise this film. Like, seriously. I knew of it because I researched all the summer films. I didn't see hardly any trailers or commercials for this leading up to its release. No wonder it only opened to $3.6 million and will be lucky to get to $10 million total.

That means all of your reactions to me posting this review will probably be a lot like my reaction back in April: "A review of 'Anna'? What is this?" So, OK, fine. I'll explain to you what this is. In doing so, there's apparently another Luc Besson movie that I need to bring up that's the best comparison. I got this from glancing over the IMDb reviews and that is the 1990 film "La Femme Nikita." That movie was remade in Hong Kong in 1991 with "Black Cat" and had an American remake in 1993 (because Luc Besson's original is in French and Americans are allergic to subtitles) called "Point of No Return." The movie has also had two TV shows inspired by it, the first in 1997 also titled "La Femme Nikita," with the second being the 2010 CW show simply titled "Nikita." I've not seen any of these Nikita movies or shows. Sorry. But I was glancing over the plot of the original film and I started laughing. Luc Besson essentially has just remade his own film with "Anna." In this movie, Anna has a bit of a messed up life. After a chase with the police following her friends attempting a robbery, she's recruited by the KGB and trained to be an undercover assassin. And if you've seen "La Femme Nikita," apparently that's the exact same premise.

OK, take away points for the lack of creativity if you want. But given that I didn't know any of this until after I saw the movie, it obviously didn't effect my viewing experience. Even if I had been well aware of "La Femme Nikita," I'm not so sure my opinion would've been changed anyways. I mean, even if I haven't seen that exact spy thriller, I have seen plenty of them to know that "Anna" wasn't the most original idea. I didn't exactly need it to be, though. I just wanted an entertaining action film. And although it wasn't quite as entertaining as I hoped it would be, it was entertaining enough. I suppose my problem is that after seeing "John Wick: Chapter 3," I now want every action movie to be as fast paced and energetic as a John Wick movie. That franchise has become the gold standard of what an action movie should be. Whenever an action movie doesn't hit that mark, part of me becomes disappointed because John Wick has spoiled me. Fair or not, that's become the reality. We've also had a lot of female-led action movies recently and I really want one of them to become the female John Wick. "Atomic Blonde" didn't do it for me. "Red Sparrow" I skipped because of too much sexuality. "Anna" ALMOST gets there, but is held back by Luc Besson since he wrote and directed this.

I think my biggest problem with this movie is that it was part action/spy thriller and part modelling movie. After Anna is recruited into the KGB, this is part of her disguise. They pretty her up and get her recruited by a major French modelling company where she excels at. She does her modelling by day, living "happily" with her girlfriend, while doing her assassin stuff by night. Sasha Luss, who plays Anna, does a fantastic job at modelling, which makes sense since she is a Russian model by trade. In fact, this is only her second acting gig, the first being a minor role in Luc Besson's "Valerian." So Besson essentially cast a Russian model as the lead role in his latest action film and allowed her to spend half of the film modelling. Even when she was doing her action stuff, it felt like she was modelling at the same time with all of her outfits as well as all the romance scenes with her three love interests in the film. I just wanted a little less modelling and a little more action. Obviously she's pleasant to look at, but that's not why I go into an action film. In her action scenes, I was pleasantly surprised at how good of job she did, especially given that this was her first time playing lead role in a film. She has an acting career if she wants it. I just wanted to see more action sequences with her.

Also in terms of the action, the movie is a lot more story based than I was expecting. When I call this an action/spy thriller, it focuses heavily on the spy stuff and less on the action stuff. There's only a few major action sequences, which are extremely entertaining, while the rest of it is all spy stuff. At its core, the movie is actually about a battle between the KGB and the CIA. Things happen at the beginning of the movie that sets the stage for said battle, then both the KGB and CIA try to secretly recruit Anna as their scapegoat to get at the other. So she ends up being a sort of double agent for both, while not knowing who to actually trust and mostly just wanting to get herself out of this sticky mess. I found this all to be a lot more compelling than I was expecting to. I was partially annoyed that I wasn't getting very much action scenes, but then I found myself caught up in this twisted web that was the plot. Adding to the twisted nature is that Luc Besson chose to jump all over the place with his narrative structure. He would take you on one journey, which ended with some dramatic moment that comes out of left field, then immediately rewinds to the point of the plot where he explains what just happened. I started to get frustrated at that, but it made for a compelling movie.

Again, Sasha Luss does a great job of holding her own in the film. She sells it as a cold-blooded action star who is willing to go shoot whoever the KGB tells her to shoot, but also adds enough emotion to her character for you to feel bad for the situation she's in. However, she's also buoyed up by a great supporting cast. I'll start by calling out a more minor role played by Lera Lova, a fellow model in her first acting role who plays Anna's girlfriend. I felt really bad for her because she thinks she's living this perfect life with the perfect modeling career and a wonderful, pretty girlfriend. She has no idea that said girlfriend is actually an assassin for the KGB who is using her to appear normal. In addition to these two new actresses, we have a lot of veterans in this film. Cillian Murphy is on the U.S. side of things with the CIA while Luke Evans and Helen Mirren play the main Russian characters in the KGB, helping Anna out there. The three of them are fantastic in their roles, making this CIA vs. KGB thing work quite well. All three of them had excellent chemistry with Anna as either a lover or a mentor. The fact that they were all convincing left a lot of doubt in my brain as to what was going to happen in this film, making this a fun and slightly unpredictable film.

So yeah, if you're coming off a huge high with something like "John Wick: Chapter 3" and you need a quick action fix, "Anna" is a solid choice. It wasn't quite the film I wanted it to be. There was too much modelling and not enough action. The majority of the action that did happen was Anna walking around shooting people, which also wasn't quite as entertaining as it could've been. There were two scenes that did remind me of a "John Wick" action sequence with Anna having to fight off a whole room full of people coming at her. Those were excellent and Sasha Luss proved that she could pull it off. It made me want to see her and John Wick come together in a movie. But given that one of those sequences was the main focus of the trailer, it just made me thirsty for more instead of feeling satisfied at what I got, which is not quite the feeling I want coming out of an action movie. But still, as I said earlier, this is entertaining enough. And it has great acting and a compelling enough story to hold it together. Given the aforementioned box office totals for this film, this is the type of film most of you are going to find in a year or two on Netflix or whatever. I think that's the perfect setting for this as it will do a good job of distracting you for two hours. My grade for "Anna" is a 7/10.