Luc Besson’s lacklustre spy thriller Anna offers little more than a vanilla Villanelle knockoff.

Although “Anna” opens like “America’s Next Top Model: The Movie”, Luc Besson’s latest action-fest plays out more like a poor carbon copy of last year’s “Red Sparrow”. It’s certainly more fun than “Red Sparrow”, but that’s not a particularly high bar to clear.

Anna (Sasha Luss) is a KGB honey trap agent working in Paris as a model but after her latest successful mission, she attracts the attention of the CIA in the form of Lenny Miller (Cillian Murphy). Despite this, her KGB handlers Tchenkov (Luke Evans) and Olga (Helen Mirren) continue to assign her targets. As the great superpowers of the 1990s play out their spy versus spy game, Anna finds herself caught between the KGB and the CIA, wanting nothing more than her own freedom.

“Anna” sees Besson firmly in his comfort zone but that comfort seems to have bred complacency and that complacency has, in turn, spread to the cast of this tediously convoluted thriller.

The story itself is pretty straightforward (and almost exactly the same as “Red Sparrow”) in that Anna is recruited at a very low turning point in her life by the KGB and is then placed under the custodianship of a dismissive spy mistress (Helen Mirren picking up a paycheque) all the while carrying on an illicit affair with her KGB recruiter Tchenkov.

For a Luc Besson action movie, there’s a distinct lack of action and what action there is feels lifeless and routine. The performances are pretty much fine, with the established veterans coasting through although Sasha Luss oddly seems to get a little stiffer and more wooden as the film progresses. Nobody, least of all the audience, is helped by a zig-zagging flashback structure which was probably meant to unfold like an intricately architected origami sculpture but instead resembles the unravelling of a crumpled-up handful of post-it notes. There’s no comfort in the dialogue either, which sounds like it wasn’t first written in English, only translated later via Google.

“Anna” treats its audience as idiots, explaining even the most mundane and obvious twists in detail and while Sasha Luss tries hard, she doesn’t really have the edge or complexity to bring this would-be superspy story to life and, under Besson’s uninvested direction ends up a very vanilla Villanelle knock-off.

anna review
Score 4/10


Hi there! If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up to get new posts sent straight to your inbox?

Sign up to receive a weekly digest of The Craggus' latest posts.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
The Inner Circle
5 years ago

Looks like a 1.50 pick up for us when it hits our video store!!! Thanks for the heads up….

logo

Related posts

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Review

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Review

Rogue One puts the 'war' back in Star Wars A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away a young moisture farmer was planning on wasting time with his friends, picking up some power converters from Tosche Station on Tatooine. But this isn’t his story…at least not yet. “Rogue One”...

A Haunted House 2 (2014) Review

A Haunted House 2 (2014) Review

Exorcise your right to avoid this flaccid and incoherent sequel. Oh boy. When will I learn? Looking back, I enjoyed the first “A Haunted House” enough to give it a (with hindsight generous) 6/10 so I was actually looking forward to this sequel. That’s the real horror of this exceedingly...

Into The Woods (2015) Review

Into The Woods (2015) Review

If you go Into The Woods today, you're in for a wonderful time With shared cinematic universes being all the rage, Disney must have been delighted to realise that Stephen Sondheim had done the work for them in his Tony award winning 1986 musical “Into The Woods”. Long destined for...

The Personal History Of David Copperfield (2020)  Review

The Personal History Of David Copperfield (2020) Review

The Personal History Of David Copperfield is a dazzling Dickensian delight Colourful, captivating and preposterously delightful, Armando Iannucci’s free-spirited adaptation of Dickens' David Copperfield brings a vibrant contemporary energy to the classic metronomic rags to riches...

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1999) Review

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1999) Review

Joan Collins sexes up a sassy and spectacular production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The 1999 direct-to-video production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT is a curious beast. Studio-bound but theatrically inspired, it also takes...

Capture The Flag (2016) Review

Capture The Flag (2016) Review

Cute and colourful, Capture The Flag shoots for the Moon. Bright, cheerful and energetic, Spanish 3D animated movie “Capture The Flag” surprises and delights in equal measure and while it’s nowhere near troubling the giants of animation, it’s a welcome alternative to the other family...

Mr Holmes (2015) Review

Mr Holmes (2015) Review

It’s mortality rather than Moriarty troubling Sherlock in the absorbing drama Mr Holmes. It’s mortality rather than Moriarty who stalks the world’s greatest detective in “Mr. Holmes”, Bill Condon’s quietly engrossing portrait of a legend in decline. Based on Mitch Cullen’s novel “A...

Morbius (2022) Review

Morbius (2022) Review

This is one vampire that will drain your will to live before he drains your blood Morbius is the cinematic equivalent of a vampire without its fangs—bloodless, toothless, and utterly lifeless, a movie so anaemic, it needs a transfusion of energy and invention that never comes...