ANNA (2019)

8/10/19 - Anna (2019) - 3/10

How do you make this film this monotonous, boring, and lifeless? This film should be cool and exciting, but all we get is a pretentious choking breath of an action film, mostly dead and even less engaging.

I felt like she had a presence but was directed to be a vacant hole in which no emotion could escape. Perhaps it is trope of the genre, but it made her time on the screen a tremendous slog. I am tending to think that Besson has an unusual tendency to want emotionally compromised robots for his leads/core characters (Leon, Fifth Element, Angel A, Lucy, Valerian, Anna). Where there were hooks and interest in the beginning, his style has devolved into boredom and the ineffectual. Anna is just the latest case. I don’t necessarily blame Luss, but I can’t not blame Besson.

There was one pretty cool action sequence (if you saw the trailer, then you got 2/3 of it), which felt a bit like if a female Terminator was in a John Wick movie, but the rest was like watching a Russian clock grind away the moments. It had the titillation of a cereal box, with just about as much surprise and excitement. I don’t know if they thought they were being so clever or had just watched Memento, but the skipping back and forth in time to “add another layer of intrigue” literally made my eyes roll. None of it was shocking, none of it was interesting, and it just strung things out. Blah!

I won’t use the Mary “she who shall not be named” Sue, but it would have been nice to see how a suicidal prostitute became the greatest model, spy, assassin, and un-killable combatant. It’s not that we don’t see a hint of time progression, but seeing some of her journey might allow us to identify with this stony spy just a little; maybe show us her strengths, weakness, hopes, desires…anything that might let us identify with her. Just saying, sometimes that stuff helps a story. Or at least helps me to give a damn.

This had a trailer that made you say “Huh, that might be ok. Maybe I will check that out.” DON’T BOTHER! A let down in every sense.