Movie Review: Anna

Michael's Movie Grade: F

Review: This film manages to be both unpleasant and dull at the same time.

It is hard to believe that the director of Le Femme Nikki could possible take a movie like this and make it so bad. While Luc Besson's directorial output has not always been flawless, Anna stands as a rarity for the filmmaker as it feels completely lazy. Every story element and character here is something we have seen a million times, with nothing new or interesting added. The movie just seems to go through the motions from each cliché with little interest in the story it is telling. In fact each character seemingly only exists for reasons of spouting cliché dialogue. They have little to no personalities themselves and never for second feel like real people. The title character follows a mistake too many filmmakers make. Her backstory is mistaken for her personality. She has had a rough life and wants to get out of it anyway possible. This is not a bad motivation, if we could care about the character. Instead however this amounts to one of her two character traits. The other character trait is even duller. She wants to have sex with anyone who moves. This trait adds nothing to the character, but rather just leads to pointless sex scenes that of left on the cutting room floor would hardly make a difference.

This film takes an odd storytelling choice. This film will show a twist and then flash back and show why this happened. There is no reason for this and it adds nothing to the movie. It is hard to look at this structure and view it as anything other than a gimmick.

There are some very unpleasant scenes in this movie, but since there is no depth to the film, these scenes are simply unpleasant to watch and nothing more. When we see Anna's unpleasant past, we see her at the hands of a cruel and abusive boyfriend. Even if we don't care for the character, watching an abusive relationship on screen is tough and uncomfortable. Less bad but still mean-spirited is when Anna tortures a photographer doing a photoshoot of her because he goes past the time he was supposed to. I don't know how we were supposed to react to this scene or what it was supposed to add to the movie. All I know is I wanted it to be over quickly. How that scene did not end up on the cutting room floor is beyond my understanding.

Simply avoid this movie at all costs.

-Michael J. Ruhland