{"id":12033,"date":"2019-06-22T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T19:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=12033"},"modified":"2019-06-22T12:57:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T19:57:27","slug":"review-anna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-anna\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Espionage Eurotrash <i>Anna<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Noted French pervert Luc Besson (<em>The Fifth Element<\/em>, <em>Lucy<\/em>) is back with another story of a badass woman who happens to be everything a horny screenwriter could want her to be &#8212; avidly bisexual, eager to sleep with men she works with, doesn&#8217;t talk a lot &#8212; in <strong><em>Anna<\/em><\/strong>, a loopy chunk of Eurotrash starring Russian model Sasha Luss as a lethal operative working with both the KGB (led by Helen Mirren and Luke Evans) and the CIA (hello Cillian Murphy) in Paris in 1990.<\/p>\n<p>Besson keeps things &#8230; well, if not interesting then at least confusing by regularly presenting a series of events that makes little internal sense, then jumping back &#8220;3 years earlier&#8221; or &#8220;2 months earlier&#8221; to explain the context. (There are at least six instances of this, including one 10 minutes before the movie ends.) The nonlinear storytelling is designed to obfuscate the story&#8217;s weaknesses, though it does result in several entertaining WTF moments. There are also story elements that make no sense anyway, regardless of timeline.<\/p>\n<p>One scene of mayhem in which Anna messily dispatches numerous foes with the broken shards of a dinner plate is thrilling in a John Wick sort of way, and there are moments of cheesy absurdity that can&#8217;t help but make you smile and shake your head. But most of it&#8217;s bland, formulaic espionage nonsense with Google-translated dialogue, ungainly attempts at comedy, and Besson&#8217;s leering gaze. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12029\" src=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\" alt=\"\" width=\"21\" height=\"24\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">C<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5><em>1 hr., 59 min.; rated R for strong violence, language, and some sexual content<\/em><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<h6><em>Join our <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Noted French pervert Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Lucy) is back with another story of a badass woman who happens [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":12034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}