Anna (2019)

You know that feeling when you order your favourite dish at a restaurant and what arrives is a lukewarm microwave version with the same label slapped on top? That's Anna in a nutshell. It looks familiar, it promises something you've enjoyed before, and then it just... sits there, going cold in front of you.

This is Luc Besson on autopilot, and it stings a little because I know what the man is capable of. I hold Léon: The Professional (1994) close to my heart. That film crackles with electricity, with genuine danger and tenderness, and Jean Reno's performance is the kind that lodges itself somewhere in your chest and stays there. Anna carries the same basic DNA, the lone assassin, the glamour, the European cool, but somewhere between the blueprint and the screen, all the life drained out of it.

Sasha Luss plays the titular character, a model-turned-KGB killer who has the bone structure for the role and, unfortunately, not a great deal else. That's not entirely her fault. Besson writes her as less a person and more a plot device in heels, delivering lines with all the warmth of IKEA assembly instructions. There's no flicker behind the eyes, no sense that anything is at stake for her. Jean Reno made you feel every quiet moment of tension, every suppressed emotion. Luss mostly just stares, beautifully, at things.

The supporting cast deserve better than they get. Helen Mirren shows up and does what Helen Mirren does, which is make something out of very little, but Besson gives her almost nothing to work with. Same goes for Cillian Murphy, who's watchable purely because he's Cillian Murphy, but you'd never know from this script that he's capable of carrying an entire television series on his shoulders. It's like handing a symphony orchestra a kazoo and asking them to play jazz.

The action sequences, to be fair, are where the film earns its keep. Besson still has an eye for composition and colour, and a few of the set pieces are genuinely slick, slow-motion bullets, neon-lit chaos, bodies arranged with a kind of brutal choreography. There's a particular sequence involving a restaurant that moves well. But here's the problem: style without soul is just a moodboard. The action pops visually and then evaporates from memory almost immediately, because you were never given a reason to care who lives or dies.

The spy plot underneath all the flash is a recycled game of double-crosses and shifting allegiances that never commits to its own twists. By the time the film starts reshuffling the timeline to reveal new wrinkles, you're likely too checked out to feel the intended cleverness. And when your most memorable single moment feels like it wandered in from Kill Bill's cutting room floor, that's a sign something's gone wrong at a foundational level.

I've kept score of Besson's career with genuine affection. I reviewed The Fifth Element (1997) and there's a joy and a wildness to that film, a total commitment to its own bonkers vision, that Anna desperately lacks. This one feels like a director going through familiar motions, ticking boxes: assassin, romance, betrayal, slow-motion kill, repeat. It never surprises you. It never earns its own excess.

Two and a half stars. It's not a disaster. It's watchable on a quiet evening if your expectations are firmly managed. But it's a soggy crumpet where you were hoping for the full fry-up, and from someone who once made assassin films feel genuinely poetic, that's a disappointment worth naming.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2019  | Watched: 2025-06-23

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Luc Besson: The Fifth Element (1997) · Léon: The Professional (1994)
More from France: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)