Luc Besson’s lifelong obsession with female empowerment has always been hard to square with his lifelong hobby of female objectification. The stylish French auteur and film mogul responsible for the likes of “Lucy,” “The Professional,” and at least nine alleged instances of sexual impropriety loves to build movies around blank women — usually fashion models — who can be reformatted with the power of his own design and costumed with the scant agency he’s afforded them.

In “Anna,” a competent spy thriller that would feel anonymous if not for its slinky bodies and recognizable psychosexual undercurrents, Besson’s signature tendency is expressed with the same literalness that it was in “The Fifth Element” and “La Femme Nikita.” Why start being subtle…

Rotten Tomatoes: 36%
Metacritic Metascore: 40
IMDB: 6.6

52/100

Release Date: 21 June 2019
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Budget: $35M
Worldwide Gross: $31.3M

Amazon Ranked
2019 Ranked

Olga: "Trouble never sends a warning."

SYNOPSIS: Beneath Anna Poliatova's (Sasha Luss') striking beauty lies a secret that will unleash her indelible strength and skill to become one of the world's most feared government assassins.

It's clear that the Charlize Theron 2017 smash hit, "Atomic Blonde", has set a new precedent for the female action hero subgenre with Red Sparrow and now Anna being released in consecutive years. While Anna doesn't cross Atomic Blonde's threshold, it's still a serviceable action flick that definitely surpassed my high expectations of "Red Sparrow".

And yes, it's clear…

LUC BESSON: Oh-ho, the Americans, they have no taste for originality. It’s sequel this, reboot that.
FRENCH CRITIC: Yes, Hollywood runs around like headless chickens, throwing everything they can into audiences’ faces, “you loved this before, you will love it again, no?”
LUC BESSON: Exactly. We French invented the motion picture, and it is we who shall shepherd it through this dark time. My new film breaks new ground, offering something never seen before. It is about this woman. She’s quite beautiful, yes.
FRENCH CRITIC: Oooh, I am intrigued already. 
LUC BESSON: But in addition, she is an assassin.
FRENCH CRITIC: An assassin? Even though she is a beautiful woman?
LUC BESSON: Yes, yes, it is hard to imagine, but…

Atomic Blonde ran so that Red Sparrow could walk and Anna could fall.

A film of such shoddy, amateurish quality whose creative I doubt even bothered to consider the audience's ability to see right past his smug veil of empty empowerment and right to the flick's core of lazy exploitation and blatant objectification. Anna (or ANИA) is a conceited power fantasy of the lowest order that fails to disguise its utterly shallow nature under a faulty veneer of unfortunately mishandled reality. The entire experience is like a used piece of gum glued to the sole of your shoe; it sticks for all of the wrong reasons.

Writer/director Luc Besson is a fading artist of seriously questionable moral character whose worst…