Review | Anna film review: Luc Besson revisits Nikita formula in sexy action thriller
- The once-great pioneer of France’s ‘Cinéma du look’ can still do eye-catching action with a dash of European glamour, this time starring model Sasha Luss
- Despite a flamboyant performance from Helen Mirren, it’s still a by-the-numbers production. Besson seems only to care about sexy women killing bad guys
2.5/5 stars
Back in 1990, Luc Besson’s stylish French thriller Nikita cast Anne Parillaud as a drug-addicted killer who is transformed into a sexy government assassin. In the decades since, the prolific filmmaker has reworked this formula several times, in films such as Leon: The Professional, Lucy, and Colombiana, among others.
Besson’s latest film, Anna, can be considered a full-blown remake of the 1990 hit, albeit with additional cold war elements. Barring a hilarious supporting turn from Helen Mirren, it is just another mildly diverting, assembly-line actioner from the once-great pioneer of France’s Cinéma du look.
Besson proved with Milla Jovovich, star of The Fifth Element and The Messenger, that he could transform a supermodel into a viable leading lady. The writer-director doubles down with Russian model Sasha Luss, whose only previous acting credit was a small role in his previous film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets .
Luss plays Anna, a Russian model working in 1980s Paris, who is recruited by the KGB to be a professional killer. Luss proves gamefully up to the task; effortlessly convincing as a head-turning beauty, she also displays the necessary speed, agility and clinical detachment one would expect from a Soviet-era assassin.
Bottling eye-catching action with a dash of European glamour has never been Besson’s problem. His weakness is his wavering ability to expand a high-concept premise into a plausible narrative, and this is Anna’s Achilles’ heel.