Anna (2019) - Spoilers!

Anna (2019)- SPOILERS! 

Directed by Luc Besson. 

Starring Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy and Helen Mirren. 

This was the first Luc Besson film I had watched all the way through, I tried to watch Lucy when I was younger and I really struggled to follow the plot of that film. However, I do think that was because I tried to watch it at 15 and at that age I probably just didn’t have the attention span for a film like that. 

Anna is one of those films where everything technical and acting wise is great, but it's let down by its writing/plot. This isn’t to say that the writing is bad. It’s a decent plot but it's lacking in detail, control and character development. 

Even with the various time jumps and the fact it’s not in chronological order, the plot is still messy. Which makes the film run risk of becoming confusing. The writing needed to be sharper and have a more organised structure. 

An example of it running risk of becoming confusing is the constant plot twists and then the backtracking and explaining of said plot twist. The first few plot twists were entertaining, such as the backtracking which explains how Anna was scouted at the market by the french modelling agency. 

But, once you get past the halfway point of the film, the plot twists and backtracking explanations become repetitive and caused me to loose focus, which then for me broke that illusion of being fully immersed in the film. 

Anna choses to be a slick, stylized violent film over depth and meaning, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t like or enjoy the film. It’s a good spy film because of the great camerawork and choreographed fight scenes. However, there is no depth and no emotional ‘ride’. You learn nothing about the characters and you feel no connected to them. 

Yes, I know you learn about Anna and her life before the joined the KGB etc, but at no point do I feel sorry for her. 

I felt very detached from the film because of this lack of connection and character development. 

However, despite this lack of character development and shallow plot. I still kind of liked Anna, I felt not emotional connection to her and her journey. But she, along with Helen Mirren’s character, Olga, was a strong female lead which was really nice to watch. I don’t watch many spy films but in most of the ones I’ve seen it's always a male lead and the woman 90% of the time is there as a love interest, that it. So for me, to see two strong female characters leading the film was great. 

To me, there was this kind of feminist undertone to the film, which I think is best represented at the end of the film, when they’re backtracking after Olga shot Anna and, they’re showing/explaining how Anna and Olga took their fates into their own hands and twisted every situation to benefit themselves. 

Another example of the feminist undertone, which some people might disagree with me on, was how comfterable Anna was with her sexuality and who she slept with. She freely had two lovers (and a girlfriend). She slept with them because she wanted to, not because she was forced to, or had two as part of her job. She was attracted to them and she used it to her advantage, not the other way around. 

Overall, Anna is a decent film with good camerawork and a very impressive choreographed fight scenes, but it lacks depth, detail and emotion. Would I watch it again? Maybe… 

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