In Anna, Luc Besson’s return to the premise that made him an international superstar director, a physically-abused young woman (Anna, played by Sasha Luss) is trained by the KGB to carry out assassinations. Not born to be a sociopath, Anna doesn’t like killing people, irrespective of her deadly skill-set. Like the genie in Aladdin (or the assassin women in the Hong Kong actioner Naked Weapon), she yearns to be free from her shackles.
If you are aware of Luc Besson’s filmography (Le Femme Nikita, the film’s spiritual predecessor, The Professional and Lucy), you’ll know that the heroine always comes out on top — the warped nature of coming out on top being debatable.
As usual, Besson is quite happy dolling up the heroine and story. The plot deliberately takes its time setting up a sequence, then jumps back in time to verify the plot-twist.
When the film opens Anna, a sweet innocent girl-next-door packing groceries, is scouted as a model. Two cuts later, she is a bona fide model in the high-stakes fashion industry. Moving from shoots to shoots, she is propositioned by an arms dealer, who was actually her target in the first place.
The plot continues swiveling as Besson sets up or reveals story twists. They are entertaining to look forward to. The execution, however, is trite (though not as far as the technicalities of filmmaking are concerned).
His cast — Helen Mirren, Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy — are fine; but then again, his actors always do their job well, no matter how ludicrous the roles may seem a few years later.
Who knows, like his previous films, the narrative will start growing on us (as in Wasabi and The Messenger). For now, though, it’s not much more than a diverting ho-hum.
Published in Dawn, ICON, June 30th, 2019