Anna (2019) – Film Review – “Back In the USSR”

I can’t believe I’m saying this…

This movie is actually worse than Red Sparrow, though not for the same reasons. Let me explain.

As we started off, I got a feel for the type of clippy, paced plot the movie was going for—the vibe I got from watching the trailer, that any of us would get from watching it. Looked like a return to form for director Luc Besson, a la Léon: The Professional. Trailers are deceptive beasts, though—ask any cynical game reporter at an E3 convention, who’s sat to watch trailer after pre-rendered trailer that tells bugger-all about the game in-question. Likewise, the trailer for this movie is exaggerated, selective, and alluring in its visuals. We get a feel for a movie that, simply, doesn’t exists—at least, certainly not in the current capacity.

After Besson’s failed Valerian in 2017, I was skeptical of another one of his films. Like Shyamalan, he’s been largely the butt of a joke—and, unlike M. Night, the subject of a headline or two—for the past decade or so. But this whole outing is a joke, save one or two semi-redeeming elements, which I’ll get to later. I felt like the movie wanted me to be stupid; flashbacks and flash-forwards to explain every…little…thing about the story and its mysteries is grueling. I was surprised to see, when I looked at my watch (to the amusement of my viewing buddy), to find we were already 40 minutes in………and nothing had happened! I actually forgot the whole first act by the time we moved onto the action—of which there is a scant and criminally-undercooked amount.

Sasha Luss and Cillian Murphy may be the best two things about this movie, what kept me rooted in my seat. Had the movie been mostly the two of them—a CIA agent, formulating a strike-back against the KGB, with only Luss’s Anna standing in his way—forming a slow, tumultuous, dynamic professional and personal relationship over the course of the film, this could’ve been the film Red Sparrow wanted to be, was advertised to be. Instead, Anna is an immediate pro on her first “show me what you can do” assignment, and everything’s just so predictable and portrayed so stalely. Blood spatter is so tellingly-CG’d, it’s not wrenching in the slightest. She and Murphy’s Agent Miller have a cool, hintingly-interesting dynamic, given time to develop. There are too many extraneous elements in the way of that, though; sub-plots, characters, and macguffins that aren’t fleshed-out, are clichéd, but thrown at the wall, allthesame, expected to stick.

Next to none of it sticks.

Luke Evans and Helen Mirren—disappointingly—do not offer anything to the movie, but (like a lot of the cardboard dialogue and flimsy suspense) I don’t believe that’s their fault. Both great actors, in their own respects, these two were handed the most underdone, poorly-timelined, and jumpiest scripts I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting through. Some of this crap, if it happened for real, would have turned the Cold War hot real fast…

Some sequences went on for too long, and a lot—especially the action scenes—had shots that lasted for far less than a second. I feel like an epileptic would be averting their eyes a lot, during those. Fleetingly-fun, but not poppy or believable or bad-ass, like suggested in the trailers. Other sequences are completely unnecessary and add nothing to the story. And this went on for two whole hours. Thing could’ve used a cut of all the fluff, a good number of the “here, idiot” flashbacks, groan-inducing intertitles suggesting leaps in time in one direction or another to the point where I had to turn to my buddy and ask, “Okay, where the hell are we now?”

Odd camerawork, paired with an all-over-the-place soundtrack, make for an overall-weird experience. For an espionage thriller (a genre titling that sounds too good, too sexy for this projectile vomiting of a movie), there’s not much mystery or things left to chance or audience guesswork.

Not the return-to-roots for Besson, nor even a nostalgia trip for some of his better films. I guess I just expected too much; I’ll be wary of the next project I see his name attached too, however tangential.

Final ‘Risk Assessment: */****. Total waste of time, save your money.

If you haven’t, already: Seek out Léon and The Fifth Element—two films with far-more-charismatic character portrayals and dynamic stories. The highlights of Besson’s western directorial career, sadly, that should have ended a long time ago…