Anna (among many movies with the same name) is a 2019 action thriller movie starring Sasha Luss, directed by Luc Besson. It deals with a strikingly beautiful woman who becomes a deadly government assassin. My Anna (2019) movie review follows.

Anna (2019) movie poster

The first thing anybody that anybody will notice is the star of the movie Sasha Luss who is a Russian model and actress. The trailer for the movie showed her as a vulnerable yet tough assassin.The action also hasn’t been cut/edited to hell. It showed real promise. What we got instead is a lot of talking, a lot of scenes of Anna being neglected, and action that is relatively short and not that memorable. However, the scene in the restaurant is well made and the longest of all the action scenes. Everything else is a head-shot here and there and Anna escaping without being found. It doesn’t give enough variety to set itself apart from other movies of similar plots. 

One of the things that I didn’t like about the movie is the constant going from past to present. It became very distracting because you get interested in one scene and it flashes to the past, taking you out of the whole experience. I know why it was done, but it doesn’t excuse it from being disorienting. Another thing that is questionable is if the movie takes place in the 80s, why is the surveillance so good? Why is the overall spy technology so advanced looking that it it looks questionable for even 90s? Somebody needed to dig a bit more into the available technology available in Russia in the 80s. 

The acting in the movie was kind of scattered in a sense that it ranged from pretty damn good to the audience questioning why you gave lines to somebody who can barely pronounce the words they were given. It’s not a huge distraction but consistency is often appreciated when it comes to cinema. 

In terms of a Cold War deadly honey pot movies, which this movie is trying to be, most people would agree that there are plenty of other movies out there with similar concept. From “Red Sparrow, “Atomic Blonde”, and “Nikita”, the concept is nothing new. I don’t know why this movie was really made. It is not trying to set itself apart and will probably disappear among better movies out there. Some people say that this movie was trying to be action packed like John Wick and I couldn’t agree less. However, if this movie tried to hammer in a feminist message, this is the wrong way to do it. 

I couldn’t care less if the hero is male or female as long as they have a good development. They need to be capable of getting themselves out of a situation that would get an average person killed. As soon as you push the whole angle of “women are strong” (which they are), the audience will destroy the movie by making fun of it rather than letting it be judged on how well it represents its action and the stars. 

Thank you for reading my Anna (2019) movie review.

Categories: Movie Reviews