Directed by:
Luc BessonScreenplay:
Luc BessonCinematography:
Thierry ArbogastComposer:
Eric SerraCast:
Sasha Luss, Helen Mirren, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Lera Abova, Aleksandr Petrov, Никита Павленко, Anna Krippa, Aleksey Maslodudov, Eric Godon, Ivan Franěk (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Beneath Anna Poliatova’s striking beauty lies a secret that will unleash her indelible strength and skill to become one of the world’s most feared government assassins. Sasha Luss in the title role with Helen Mirren, Cillian Murphy and Luke Evans. (Lionsgate UK)
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Reviews (10)
An alternative to Red Sparrow, or rather La Femme Nikita, made by the pop-culture lover of European action films Luc Besson, who cast an unknown girl with a sexy look and long legs instead of an A-list actor. The plot is more complex on the surface, with a lot of flashbacks and time jumps, but in the end it's all about the same: everybody betraying everybody, it's just a matter of how cool they are while doing that. Helen Mirren is the coolest by far, the rest are more or less OK. Ironically, Anna is a film with damnably little action, and the delicious restaurant scene touted in the trailer is the actually the only proper action scene of the whole film. This is impressive, but Besson traditionally gives way to a certain degree of raw reality and leans more towards the style of an action ballet in the style of John Woo, where everything looks gorgeous, everything moves along nicely and the cameraman rotates around the main character in style, but the heroine doesn't grow on you, nor does the main male cast, so all that's left is the aforementioned old lady, whose behaviour and appearance safely evokes echoes of the Cold War of the 1980s and 90s in a typically Russian crude style. And one more thing, the production really messed-up the nineties setting, in one scene there are cars with LED lights on the road, and there are mobile phones everywhere.
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I’ll be honest, this was kind of a silly film. Although Luc Besson finetuned his style, and it was even entertaining, it was also disarmingly dumb. Given my yesterday’s rating of Ready or Not, I must admit I seem to have a soft spot for anorexics with a titanium jaw and an impressive body count. Anyway, I had a good time watching and didn’t have to worry about getting bored for even a second. I noticed that Luc Besson didn’t hesitate to rip off his own Nikita in some scenes, and that Helen Mirren’s character didn’t need to wear leather boots to make it obvious that she was working for KGB.
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At the end of Besson's La Femme Nikita, Tchéky Kario smilingly announces to her boyfriend that they're going to miss the girl and he just takes an unhappy drag from his cigarette, nods his head and looks out the window in response. And I kind of think that despite all this, this is how we're going to talk about Luc Besson when it all falls apart, Europa Corp goes bankrupt, and he himself goes into images of the past. Because as much as we may freak out about the lack of logic, the lack of a coherent plot, the attempt to disguise the awful digital imagery, the completely incomprehensible anachronisms (for at least the second time with Besson, I feel like he decided on the period when the film would be set no earlier than in post-production), or the lack of dramaturgy, we still have to remember that this is the price we pay today for watching some of the last of the West’s auteur action films. Moreover, in this case, Besson takes a ways further his torch of the Cinéma du look movement, which worked with a distinctive advertising aesthetic, among other things. Indeed, everything here is completely secondary to the product Besson is interested in – the three-foot, thirty-pound and, in the action scenes, utterly breathtaking Sasha Luss. That's why the only things that work in the film are the things she touches, and only because she’s the one touching them. The resulting Gaussian curve, where we are moved from irritating civilian scenes to the best action sequences of the year, is probably best expressed in the words of Milan Vébro, director of Settlement of Crows 2: "It was great! It was terrible."
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It's not overwrought, it's just completely stupid. Plus, I simply don't give a damn about these sharp girls with anorexic body constitutions that would make their arms heavy even with a toothpick in their palms, and yet they're getting it on with a plethora of jacked-up bodyguards. Besson is already a parody of himself, but Europa Corp. is giving him work, so why would he change it.
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An action B-movie about a KGB assassin who must unleash a secret service war to win her freedom. And the whole thing is unfortunately mediocre fun at best. Two good action scenes and a seductive Sasha Luss in the lead role can't hide the fact that it's all surprisingly stupid and ultimately not very entertaining.
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