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)
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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 (11)
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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A stylish action movie with an atomic blonde in the role of a brilliant spy. High-octane fun with breathtaking choreography and a perfect team of actors in the supporting roles. It’s just the kind of nonsense that, despite being terribly naïve, was made with such gusto that you’re going to want to watch it more than many an Oscar winner. Besson’s still got it.
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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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If Anna had been the work of some newcomer, there would have been great admiration for the cleverly written screenplay and solid directing. But for Luc Besson, it’s not all that astounding. The film rather looks like one of his genre flicks, which he had previously passed on to his younger collaborators. Perhaps it should have been handed off before his EuropaCorp was impacted by debts and Besson and his colleagues were forced to lay people off and sell the company’s subsidiaries. In the context of that part of Besson’s filmography, where he figures in as the creator of the theme, co-author of the screenplay and producer, Anna deservedly ranks highly as a precision-crafted variation on the masterwork Nikita, updated to a glossily more superficial form and made special by it outstanding screenplay, which after a certain amount of runtime always rotates the field of view, thus transforming the viewers’ perspective not only on events that they saw a moment ago, but also on the titular heroine. From an originally apathetic object, she first becomes a clever tool and then, after a few turns, she appears as a sophisticated manipulator and, primarily, a chess genius making plans numerous steps ahead of the viewer and the other characters. In addition to that, we have action scenes that do not deny the inspiration of Atomic Blonde, and even though the ambitious and causally designed choreography cannot come close to that of Atomic Blonde, they still offer a refreshing hyperkinetic physical spectacle. But then one remembers that this is an original work by the same man who was once able to do much more enthralling things with the characters of women who find themselves in the unwanted position of action heroines. In Nikita, he showed the world of spies as a ruthless and sordid place where the heroine desperately faces helplessness and, like a predatory beast, has to fight not only for her life, but above all else for her sanity and whatever remains of her innocence. In Lucy, on the other hand, Besson released the whole genre from the shackles of unnecessary rationality and let his heroine transform the connective tissue of reality/film and, through this destruction of rules, create a cyberpunk innovation that showed us how unnecessarily limited films are when they sacrifice imagination at the expense of believability. Besson was a filmmaker who enchanted viewers, cooked up modern-day fairy tales and thrilling fantasies, sought out poetry in the grimy corners of everyday environments, opened our hearts to hired killers and extra-terrestrial beings, and invited us to new worlds beyond the boundaries of our own imagination. If the publicists’ predictions come to pass and EuropaCorp is hit with bankruptcy and Besson by numerous accusations, Anna may paradoxically be his last battle for viewers. Perhaps Besson is a relic of another time and can no longer easily find an audience that is sufficiently in tune with his vision. Perhaps for today's audience, Anna can be a welcome refreshment and a good genre treat. For witnesses whose love for cinema was at least in part inspired by Besson’s early films, however, it is rather a sad denouement.
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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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