Anna (2019)

[AimingforYoko]

Quote

Beneath Anna Poliatova's striking beauty lies a secret that will unleash her indelible strength and skill to become one of the world's most feared government assassins.

Is it stealing if you're stealing from yourself? 'Cause this cribbed more than a bit from La Femme Nikita. 

For Besson's Lucy, my review was "Entertaining Nonsense". I stand by that for this movie. Time jumps and anachronisms aplenty (The CIA had USB flash drives in 1990? Sure, why not?) But for most of the two hours, I was entertained. Would I have seen this if I had to pay money for it? (I have A-List) Probably not, but I don't feel like I wasted my time.

[Proclone]

On 6/21/2019 at 7:01 PM, AimingforYoko said:

Is it stealing if you're stealing from yourself? 'Cause this cribbed more than a bit from La Femme Nikita. 

For Besson's Lucy, my review was "Entertaining Nonsense". I stand by that for this movie. Time jumps and anachronisms aplenty (The CIA had USB flash drives in 1990? Sure, why not?) But for most of the two hours, I was entertained. Would I have seen this if I had to pay money for it? (I have A-List) Probably not, but I don't feel like I wasted my time.

I agree overall.  It was entertaining enough and I also used a rewards card to get a free ticket so perhaps my enjoyment is also colored by not having to pay for it.  I thought the action was enjoyable.  The characters I was meh on, especially Anna herself.  I think it's fairly obvious that Sasha Luss is a model and not really an actress.  She wasn't bad, but there wasn't much there, there.  The only scene where I really liked her and felt we were actually seeing Anna is the scene where she gets frustrated and hits the rude photographer with the camera and then makes him pose for her.  I get that to pull off a good spy thriller some of the main characters needs to be hidden from the audience.  But we still need to like and root for the character for it to work.  Another recent spy thriller Red Sparrow suffered from the same problem (it also suffered from other problems including excessive sexual violence) in that you never really knew the main character enough to care about her. Atomic Blonde, on the other hand, both managed to keep Lorriane's motivations hidden but also gave away enough to make you care about her, at least IMO. 

I'll admit to not being fond of the lesbian relationship being used as a cover and never really addressed.  Did Anna feel bad she was using Maud?  Did she care for her at all?  The did seem to have a legit moment of flirting when the first meet.  They could have used the relationship to give Anna some depth, but it's just there.  I honestly would have preferred the simply cut that storyline if they weren't going to do anything with it.  Anna already bouncing around between Alex and Lenny was more than enough.

But as compared to Valerian (the last Luc Benson film I saw and one I honestly considered walking out on it was so bad), this is a masterpiece. 

[AimingforYoko]

42 minutes ago, Proclone said:

Did Anna feel bad she was using Maud?  Did she care for her at all?

To be fair, that was Anna's M.O. with everybody. I don't think she had any deeper feelings with Luke Evans or Cillian Murphy.

[Proclone]

1 hour ago, AimingforYoko said:

To be fair, that was Anna's M.O. with everybody. I don't think she had any deeper feelings with Luke Evans or Cillian Murphy.

Quite possible, but at least those relationships had impacts on the plot.  And I do tend to think she at least kind of cared about Luke Evans.  Their relationship seemed the least calculated and most organic.

The relationship with Maud was just there.  It didn't impact the plot.  It wasn't even really for fanservice, they barely touched each other.  I just don't understand the point in adding another relationship that ultimately has no impact on an already convoluted plot.