She’s a black hole at the centre of the film, her performance so sedate and lifeless that it sucks all the energy right out of a thriller that should be jacked up with adrenaline. Luss appears in virtually every scene of Anna, and in not a single one of them does she prove worthy of such a task. The similarly themed Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow were both deeply flawed, but Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence elevated them effortlessly, both bringing old-fashioned star presence to projects that didn’t deserve them. For so much of the film, Besson rests on the “shock” appeal of showing a beautiful blonde woman being able to kill just as ruthlessly and as violently as any man, as if we’re new to the concept and as if that’s enough to add sheen to a tired, familiar plot.īesson sees Anna as a star vehicle for Russian model Luss, who he used as an alien in Valerian, and as rote as the script might be, one can still imagine what the right choice of actor might have brought to the material.

In the almost 30 years since his original hit, we have seen a string of films focused on female assassins (although still not nearly as many as those starring men) yet Anna seems to exist in a world where these films don’t exist. Revisiting his 1990 calling card La Femme Nikita, Besson has managed something quite astonishing in that he has somehow made Anna even worse than that film’s much-loathed Hollywood remake, 1993’s Point of No Return. But after years of servitude, Anna starts to worry that a life spent taking other lives might not be what she really wants. But one day she gets given an opportunity to work for the KGB and after being reluctantly taken under the wing of sour, ruthless handler Olga (Helen Mirren) she finds herself to be a surprisingly ruthless assassin while moonlighting as a model because of course. In 80s Moscow, there aren’t that many available to her and while trying to strike out on her own, the patriarchal society she’s trapped in forces her into a life of submission. In a plot that feels patchworked together from better films, Anna (Luss) is a woman in need of a chance. It’s competent and even complacent at times, a million miles from what one would expect from the director of The Fifth Element. Anna is not quite pedestrian but it never really feels like the work of someone with anything to say or prove. But Besson’s gonzo excesses didn’t attract a wide enough audience and everything about his follow-up feels like a director settling back into a safe groove. After Besson scored a surprise global hit with the rather barmy Scarlett Johansson actioner Lucy, he used his increased sway to get the even barmier Valerian made, an audacious and expensive misfire that at the very least showcased his untamed creative spark.

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