Anna (2019) Director: Luc Besson Starring: Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren, Eric Godon
Certificate: 18 Running Time: 118 Minutes
Tagline: "Never make the weapon the target."
Basing an ass-kicking film or show around a female vigilante or assassin seems to be all the rage at the moment but Luc Besson has been wise to their potential for many moons now. His latest effort is perhaps his most blatant since La Femme Nikita back in 1990 and, like that iconic film, is named after its main character. As with the French junkie, despite being blessed with favourable aesthetic qualities, Anna (Luss) has not thus far enjoyed a life of glamour and riches. She lives a somewhat downtrodden life in a stinky apartment in Russia with her abusive dick of a criminal boyfriend, but when his latest scheme backfires she finds herself needing to leave town. Before she can do that, a shady guy called Alex (Evans), apparently a KGB agent, gives her a choice - work for them or else, basically! Shockingly, she accepts their offer of gainful employment upon learning she need only survive for five years before being freed from any obligations with a clean record. All she has to do is take out whomever they tell her to.
After enduring an extensive period of training, she ends up working undercover as a fashion model owing to her appropriate physical attributes (she's young, tall and hot), and despite getting a little distracted by the underpants region of a fellow young hotty model, she carries out her 'jobs' as directed while also dutifully performing her undercover work as well. Before too long, however, she ends up on the CIA's radar, notably a wily agent called Leonard Miller (Murphy) who wants her to work for him instead. The target? Vassiliev (Godon), the head of the KGB, naturally. So, does Anna risk everything to get rid of the guy who has a hold on her for the benefit of the enemy, or does she remain loyal but probably also in chains? Maybe she could use her training to come up with a third option...
It's fairly paint-by-numbers as far as the main plot is concerned, though we do jump back and forth between several timelines, but it's Sasha Luss I was most interested in here. She's actually a model for real and Anna is her first lead acting role but she does a pretty good job for me. She seems to flit between personas well, inspiring sympathy one moment before convincing as a ruthless killer the next. She does have decent support for the most part too, notably from Helen Mirren as her KGB handler, Olga, though Evans makes a less convincing Russian. The only real issue with Anna, though, is that while it does what it does competently enough, there's still nothing here we haven't seen done better elsewhere, even by Besson himself. There are some great scenes though, and it's worth a watch for fans of the genre, but you may not be as dazzled by Anna as her many targets are.
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