Anna

Anna (2019) is about a model in Moscow who is actually an assassin. Anna is found in a market and taken to Paris as a model. That identity covers her real work: she works for the KGB, and in every country she enters as a model there is a target. The film keeps breaking time. A scene ends and a card appears: three years earlier. Then the same event is shown again from another angle and what you have seen changes. The move is repeated many times. Both sides are using her: her KGB handler and a CIA officer who identifies her. She works for both at once, and her real plan is to buy her own way out. The best section is a shootout in a restaurant: one location, a long take, many targets. Luc Besson wrote and directed. After Nikita and Lucy this is the third time he returns to the same template: a woman trained, used, and finally acting for herself. Sasha Luss leads; she is a model in real life and this was her first major role. Helen Mirren, Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy are in the cast. Mirren's handler is the best work in it. It was released while the allegations against Besson were in the news and received almost no promotion in America; it failed commercially. The time breaks become too numerous at some point and lose their effect. It runs 119 minutes. Good for: spy action, fight scenes, and structural games. Less good for: the structure is repetitive and the characters have little depth.