As Anna goes undercover as a fashion model and completes various missions and assassinations you can't help but feel it's a Sasha Luss star vehicle (which works) with its sole purpose as to backdoor her into a resident evil reboot. The cast are on fine form although Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy and especially Helen Mirren appear to be too higher caliber actors given the sexy espionage subject matter. Nevertheless, Mirren seems to to having a fantastic time as the KGB handler Olgar. Eric Godon is notable, even if brief as KGB head Vassiliev.
Anna is reminiscent of Salt (2010) and the type of film Luc Besson would usually produce and/or write. It's tightly edited, with plenty of pace. Although the time period setting and recreation doesn't always hit the mark, the action setups and hard hitting shoot outs are finely crafted. It has a Bourne and graphic flavour of the week John Wick style. To Besson and Julien Rey's credit the editing forms part of what makes Anna more interesting than most action films, it's there to serve the story not just to be clever or flashy.
Overall, it's more fun than 2014's Lucy, that said, it hasn't a scope of the likes of Besson's The Fifth Element (1997), Valerian (2017) or the grit of criticality acclaimed Leon (1994) nor Subway (1985) but it is a modest, solid, Cold War action with plenty of twists and turns.
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