Anna (2019)

Directed by Luc Besson. Starring Sasha Luss, Cillian Murphy, Luke Evans, Helen Mirren, Lera Abova, Nikita Pavlenko, Eric Godon, Alexander Petrov, Anna Kripa. [R]

Director Besson reworks the highlight reel for another of his commercial action thrillers, too imitative for its own good. Young Russian Luss is recruited by the KGB to be an assassin, then by the Americans as a double agent, then…you see where this is going. Far-fetched even by the cartoonish standards of these sorts of stylized violent escapism fantasies, with a tendency to present “shocking” story developments that are then explained away by jumping to a series of flashbacks—trouble is, without investment in the blank-faced protagonist’s feelings or fate, they just feel like awkward plot devices. Besson still knows his way around a preposterous set piece and delivers a couple that might have been real doozies if not for the fact that one copies a setup from La Femme Nikita and the other overuses the mindless pop-up-enemy arcade technique. In the pantheon of models-turned-actors, Luss is adequate, but far better at the physical aspects of the role than the emotional ones; Mirren and Murphy bring a little more zest than needed to the spy adventure staples they play. Like Atomic Blonde (a non-Besson flick from which he also borrows), the story is set in the Glasnost era of the late-80s/early-90s even though characters can be spotted using far more modern tech several times.

51/100