Anna
Short description
Anna Poliatova appears to be a striking young woman selling matryoshka dolls at a Moscow market in the late 1980s, until a scout from a French modeling agency recruits her for a career in Paris. Her work in front of the cameras conceals her real assignment: she is an operative trained for the KGB, using her position as a model as cover while carrying out assassinations. The arrangement becomes more complicated as the CIA takes an interest in her, and Anna finds herself caught between the agencies that want to use her and the question of who she actually is.
Luc Besson directed and wrote the film, the seventeenth of the twenty features he has directed in chronological order, following Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and preceding Dogman. Sasha Luss plays Anna, with Helen Mirren as Olga, Luke Evans as Alex Tchenkov, Cillian Murphy as Lenny Miller, Lera Abova as Maude and Alexander Petrov as Piotr. The production involved 75 credited cast members and 207 credited crew.
The film was released in June 2019 and runs 119 minutes. Made for about 34 million dollars, it earned roughly 32 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from about 107,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 out of 10 from around 3,100 votes. A critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from 73 reviews places it below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the third minute, a scene shows a Mercedes-Benz G-Class (W463) crashing into a Lada. In 1985, when the film's events take place, this vehicle could not have existed, as this model of SUV was not produced until 1990.
- In the chase scene following the failed ATM robbery, non-existent vehicle license plates are shown. The film takes place in the USSR in 1987, but the plates have a format used in Russia since 1993. Furthermore, the 97 region code (Moscow) was introduced in 2002, and the 197 code in 2010.
- At the end of the film (1990), Olga looks at Anna's dossier on a KGB laptop. Under Anna's photograph is the Russian tricolor.
- During the film's production, screenwriter, producer, and director Luc Besson was accused of sexual harassment, but due to insufficient evidence, no official charges were filed.
- At the 4th minute of the film, they show the Kremlin in Izmailovo, which construction began in 1998, while the action takes place in 1990.
- After Vasilyev’s murder, Anna copies data onto a USB flash drive. However, the USB format did not appear until 1995.
- At the 4th minute of the film, they show a monument to de Gaulle, which was only erected in 2005, while the action takes place in 1990.
- The film features a large number of devices that do not match the time period: at the beginning of the film, Anna fills out an application on a laptop online (the action takes place in the USSR in 1985); tourists in Paris walk around with mobile phones, and some of the cameras and photographic equipment are anachronistic.
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