Tag: spy

Killing Eve: Season Three

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★★
“How the mighty are fallen.”

I remember how the first series of Killing Eve blew my socks off, and was completely unlike anything else on television. The second series fell short, but that was unsurprising – how could it be otherwise? – and there was still the chance for it to mount a course correction and recover. This third installment, however, has if anything accelerated the downward trend. What was once must-see television has become something which sits on in the background, typically as I surf the Internet on my phone. I can’t think of another series which has collapsed in such a remarkably brief time-frame.

The problem is, the writers have completely forgotten what made the show work was the dynamic between Russian assassin Villanelle (Comer) and the MI5 agent, Eve (Oh), who is on her tail. I was wary of the frantic, moist fan ‘shipping which went on over this – at a level I haven’t experienced in anything I’ve been part of, since the more rabid elements of Xena fandom in the nineties. Yet I couldn’t deny it was the chemistry between the two characters which defined the show and made it work. Yet, the focus of the second season seemed to drift from this, and in the third, it felt more like I was flicking between two different shows. It felt as if Villanelle and Eve operated in the same universe only barely, and hardly crossed paths at all.

Indeed, it also seemed to forget what Villanelle was: an assassin. We’ve gone far from the glorious spectacle kills we saw previously, Here, she has become so sloppy, she can’t even dispatch Eve’s husband with a pitchfork to the neck properly. Our anti-heroine seemed instead to spend more of this season faffing around Europe, from Spain to Russia. This involved Villanelle either bitching at co-workers with the shadowy organization known as The Twelve, trying to reconnect to her family (an endeavour so clearly doomed from the start, you wonder why they bothered), or grooming the daughter of former handler Konstantin, for reasons which never pay off adequately.

At least Villanelle is getting some stuff to do, even if it’s far from enthralling. Eve, on the other hand, spent much of the season stuck in a holding pattern, when seen in any form – at least one episode went by without her appearing at all. Eve appears little if any closer to tracking down her nemesis than she was at the beginning of the first season, and her investigation into The Twelve has born equally little fruit. It has cost Eve her husband, so there has been an emotional price. However, he was always painted by the show as being a bit of a dick, whose fidelity was questionable, so the impact of this loss feels limited.

Put bluntly, while the two lead actresses are doing their best, I don’t care any longer about the characters or their fates. And probably never will, for as long as the showrunner appears more concerned with shoehorning in Taylor Swift covers than developing the story. Sorry. Just not interested.

Showrunner: Suzanne Heathcote
Star: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Darren Boyd

The Chinese Woman: The Barbados Conspiracy, by Brian N. Cox

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Though just called “Brian Cox” on the book, it’s probably wise to begin by distinguishing the author here from his more famous namesakes, both the actor and the “rock-star physicist.” That said, this is a brisk if not particularly memorable spy novel. The main outstanding feature is that the heroine is neither American nor British, but Chinese. Rather odd to be reading this very positive portrayal of Communist state security personnel, during the protests in Hong Kong.

She goes by a couple of different names in the book. As a 12-year-old kid, she’s Zhen Xiaomei, and watches her mother and family get brutally slain by gangsters Wu Xing and Meng Hong, due to an unpaid debt. [If you’ve seen Kill Bill Volume 1, you’ll be aware of how this is going to work out for them…] A quarter century later, she works as an agent for the Ministry of State Security, Second Bureau, when she is given a mission to travel to the United States and bring back a fugitive to stand trial in China. Initially, Xiaomei is reluctant – but her tune changes, when she discovers the fugitive is Wu Xing.

Under the guise of PhD student Li Mei, she begins trying to track Wu down in Seattle, by befriending his girlfriend Han Xia. She also encounters FBI agent Sean McNamara, and begins a relationship with him – initially as a source of information, but it’s never that simple, is it? Complicating matters further is the titular plot, in which a rogue faction of hawks in the Taiwanese and American military, are plotting to launch a nuclear missile at Taiwan, and blame it on China. A jaunt to the Caribbean? Don’t mind if Li Mei does. Though it’s kinda awkward when she bumps into Sean there.

These plots never quite mesh, and it would probably have served each of them better, if they had been handled in their own volume.  There’s also a thread about a serial killer, which doesn’t appear to serve much purpose, and the split of the story between Xiaomei and Sean sometimes makes it feel like the author was uncertain who was really his central character. Cox also tends to go overboard on the descriptive aspects of his characters, beyond what is necessary, and certainly what is interesting. A couple of well-written facets are more effective than a head-to-toe description: we don’t need to identify them in a police line-up.

The main positive is the heroine, who is a strong and effective agent, smart and thoroughly competent in her actions. Her background makes her considerably more interesting than McNamara, and I was left wanting to know more about her further adventures. While not a great work of literature, it is an entertaining one, and I ripped through it quickly. The second volume is free, through a link in #1, in exchange for your email address. At that price, I’m almost tempted to sign up.

Author: Brian N. Cox
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in The Chinese Woman series.

Merciless Charity by Wayne Stinnett

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

To be charitable (pun not intended), this might perhaps have come across better if I were familiar with the “Caribbean Adventure” series by the same author, featuring the exploits of ex-marine Jesse McDermitt. That long-running franchise saw its sixteenth(!) entry published in November, and this volume appears to be the first in a spin-off series from the same universe. This may be why the early going is really tough. Explanations of who people are and their relationships, are notable by their absence, and if it’s tacitly presumed you know them from his other work, that would make sense.

In particular, there’s an early plot thread where our heroine, Charity Styles, help track down kidnappers on their boat. But it’s a while before we discover who was abducted, and the whole thread seems to go absolutely nowhere, with Charity dropping people and then flying off. Only after then do we get to the main story, where she vanishes off the grid, in order to sail a boat from Miami to Mexico, make her way up the side of a volcano, and take out the terrorist cell who have set up a training camp there, preparing for an attack in Texas. None of which makes a great deal of logical sense. Why sail, rather than fly? Hell, take a submarine. And why is the US government pussyfooting around with an ocean-going sniper, when a well-placed Hellfire missile or two would be just as effective, and considerably quicker?

Regardless, this means that more than half the book is taken up with the 1,200 nautical mile sailing trip, including a particularly irrelevant side mission to rescue some Cuban refugees. As ocean-going travelogue, it’s actually not bad, and almost makes me want to buy a yacht. But as action-heroine fiction goes? It’s mild stuff indeed, and until she reaches the terrorist camp, the sole incident of note is an encounter with a would-be mugger. It seems a bit of a waste of a violent background, which saw Charity captured after the helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Afghanistan. She was held by a Taliban group, and brutally violated by them, over an extended period, before escaping, taking revenge and being rescued. That’s an entire hold’s worth of baggage which could potentially be unpacked into her character, yet it never happens.

Things do perk up in the final battle, where we finally see the unleashed savagery of which Charity is capable, living up to the title of the book. The terrorists don’t have a chance, to put it mildly. Though they’re not just up against a lethal sniper, but what can only be described as a volcano ex machina. It’s too little, too late, and I must confess I was glad this was a quick read, coming in at only 224 pages. There’s nothing here to make me want to delve any further into these warm waters.

Author: Wayne Stinnett
Publisher: Down Island Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in Caribbean Thriller Series.

Agent Jade Black

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★½
“Someone should go Black to basics.”

This originally was going to be included in my preview for the year, since it showed up in the IMDb with a release date of January 7, 2020. But on Googling, I found it already had seeped out on Tubi, a free movie channel. At time of writing, this would appear to be the first review written about it anywhere, though it should be considered less a preview than a dire advance warning. Indeed, I could condense the whole thing into one word: “Don’t.” For a more pedestrian, poorly-executed excuse for an action film, you’d be hard pushed to find. Right down to the initials of its lead character and the tag-line on the poster (right), this possesses aspirations it fails miserably to achieve. On the plus side, 2020 can really only go up from here.

Jade Black (Burgess) is a globe-trotting agent, working for a clandestine department of the US government under her boss, Malcolm (Flack). Initially tasked with bringing a scientist in from Italy, that mission goes pear-shaped, and the target killed. His laptop survives, and opens the door to a looming plot. He was working on a biological weapon known as “Juliet”, triggered by chemicals the body releases during sex. The shadowy Darrian group are plotting to use this, and the related antidote, for… the usual nefarious purposes in which shadowy groups in C-grade movies engage, including the release of Juliet at a political fundraiser. Front and center in opposition to Jade is Darrian operative Elle (Franklin), another former acolyte of Malcolm. Like Jade, she was rescued by him from sex traffickers as a teenager. Only, in Elle’s case, the psychological damage suffered was too great to overcome, and she went rogue instead.

The above actually sounds kinda interesting – certainly, considerably more so than it is in execution. Part of the problem is the resources are incapable of delivering anything the script asks of them. “Italy” for example, appears entirely depicted by the scientist using an espresso maker. There’s not even any token stock-footage of Rome. When your film is shot entirely in Oklahoma, why mention Italy at all? This kind of ludicrous over-reach peppers the whole movie, considering it can only depict Malcolm’s office by tacking a couple of maps to the wall of a generic room. Spears’ direction is also terrible, though it may be more of an editorial issue. Both individual shots and entire scenes appear to have been cut with a blunt butter-knife, ending too soon or going on too long.

There’s absolutely no rhythm or pacing, with the film lurching and juddering from one moment to the next, and the players exchange one-liners that are less groan-worthy than induce actual nausea. It rapidly becomes painful to watch, despite the best efforts of the cast, who aren’t as relentlessly terrible as the direction or writing. Franklin comes out best, sinking her teeth effectively into her bad-girl role. But you could have had Meryl Streep in this, and she would have been unable to salvage it.

Dir: Terry Spears
Star: Katie Burgess, Sidney Flack, Connie Franklin, Taylor Reich

Tiffany Jones

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★★½
“Immodesty Blaise.”

Fashion model Tiffany Jones (Hempel) finds herself dropped into the middle of international intrigue, after President Boris Jabal (Pohlmann), leader of the Eastern European state of Zirdana, takes a shine to her during a state visit to Britain. It’s supposed to be a trade negotiation, but is really to allow Jabal to broken an arms deal with some shady Americans. Her meeting the President brings her to the attention of two factions of Zirdanian rebels.

The nice is led by Prince Salvator (Thomas), the ruler in exile. The not-so-nice are a more aggressive faction, operating out of a restaurant kitchen. Both wonder what Tiffany is doing with Jabal, and are keen to use her to achieve their ends. Which is fine by her, since she has no love for the authoritarian regime which controls Zirdana. So Tiffany agrees to a plan where Jabal will be distracted, preventing from seeing the arms dealers, and a substitute will take the meeting in his place.

Walker is better know for his S&M horror films, with titles such as House of Whipcord, and it’s safe to say saucy comedy like this is not his strong suit. There’s no shortage of sauce, to be sure. It’s reported that Hempel (now known as Lady Weinberg, through marriage) bought up the rights to the film, as well as her work with Russ Meyer, Black Snake, for showing rather too much of her. And that’s before we get to the garden party she throws for Jabal, populated by a flock of 1970’s dolly-birds, who shed their clothes enthusiastically at the drop of a cocktail napkin. The whole thing – a plot to get sexually compromising material on a visiting foreign leader – does still have contemporary resonance…

It’s the comedy angles which are a horrible failure, with virtually every attempted joke falling flatter than Hempel’s chest [quite how she ended up in a Meyer film escapes me, given his fondness for the more-endowed end of the feminine spectrum. Then again, he said later of Hempel, “We had a stand-in for the tits and wouldn’t let her speak.”] It’s not just the passage of time, for the Carry On films of the same era have endured very well: I suspect this was simply not very funny to begin with, and appears to have tanked at the box-office. Like Modesty Blaise, it was based on a British newspaper comic-strip, which ran from 1964-77. Unusually for the era, it was created by two women, Pat Tourret and Jenny Butterworth, though I suspect the newspaper version was likely less salacious.

The main redeeming aspect here is Hempel, who has a lovely, breezy charm which manages to sail above the leaden material, almost redeeming it. She portrays Jones with an endearing mix of savviness and innocence, as she dodges the (literal) grasp of President Jabal, and the more fanatical of his opponents, while working to help the Prince regain his throne. Probably wisely, the morality of replacing an absolute, unelected leader with another absolute unelected leader, simply because the latter is younger and cuter, is never addressed. Hempel is not quite enough to rescue this, and it’s perfectly understandable why this vanished into obscurity, with or without the lead actress’s help.

Dir: Pete Walker
Star: Anouska Hempel, Eric Pohlmann, Damien Thomas, Susan Sheers

The Leine Basso series, by D.V. Berkom

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Leine (short for Madeleine) Basso quit her job as a somewhat-sanctioned government assassin, after realizing her boss was using her to carry out off-book, non-sanctioned ops for his personal gain. Oh, and he also tricked her into killing her lover, and b Initially working in private security, she is hired on a reality show, following the murder of a contestant (Book 1: Serial Date) by a serial killer out to make a point. Leine’s daughter is abducted, and it turns out the perpetrator is a shadow from her past, with a grudge.

In the next entry (Book 2: Bad Traffick), she’s the bodyguard to a Johnny Depp-like actor, Miles Fournier. A young girl, trying to escape from human traffickers, seeks Miles’s help, and Leine finds herself involved in taking down the ring. This experience convinces her to join up with former colleague Lou Stokes at SHEN, a private group committed to fighting human trafficking, and this forms the focus of both the third and fourth volumes. In the former (Book 3: The Body Market), a American girl on a weekend in Tijuana is abducted; the latter (Book 4: Cargo) sees an American girl holidaying in Bangkok abducted. While the third is perhaps the best in the series, I could probably have done without what feels very much like a repeat immediately afterward.

Berkom seems perhaps to have felt similarly, for the next volume (Book 5: The Last Deception) marks a sharp turn in direction. While visiting a friend at a Middle East refugee camp, Leine comes into possession of a flash-drive with potentially explosive contents, revealing a plot by a rogue Russian to lure the US into a Middle East war. While there is still an abducted girl who needs to be rescued (the daughter of an arms dealer), it’s more a sub-plot, rather than the main focus of the story. I confess to not yet having read the final two entries (Book 6: Dark Return and Book 7: Absolution), but based on the synopsis they are a little “rescue an abducted girl” and a little “forcing her to revisit a dark and violent past she thought she’d left behind.”

I haven’t mentioned A Killing Truth yet, either. Chronologically, it’s the first, though is more of a novella, coming in at a crisp 156 pages, and takes place at a point when Leine was still a federal employee. @@@@ It was the last one I read, though it doesn’t make too much difference. Berkom is good at referencing past events where relevant in future volumes. But there is not much in each book which requires particular explanation, and you could pick up any one as a standalone entity without real bother. I got editions 1-3 as an omnibus, then tacked on #4 and #5; discovering there is now an omnibus edition for them plus #6 was rather annoying. I wish there was some way I could “trade in” those two and get the omnibus.

That’s a technical issue, not particularly relevant to this review, however. To be honest, when I got the first book, I was expecting more globetrotting assassinations, and less stuff more befitting a PI or homicide detective, which is really what the first two books are more like. Things perk up considerably in #3, with Leine having to handle life south of the border; you’ll probably be crossing Mexico off your list of potential destinations by the time you’re done there. They do seem – consciously or not – to become more exotic and international, as they go on. #4 and #5 take place almost exclusively abroad, to the point that I felt a bit sorry for Leine’s boyfriend, who must barely see her!

That is a bit of an issue, though it’s a double-edged sword. I’m no fan of romantic dalliances in my action, but after Berkom sets them up as being passionately involved in one book, it seem odd for their relationship to be so apparently non-committal in the next. The same applies to Leine’s relationship with her daughter, which goes from estranged to deeply-devoted, and then back to “Leine seems little more than irritated her daughter has been abducted by Middle Eastern traffickers”. The stories work rather better when she’s operating purely on her own; then again, I don’t expect an assassin to be much of a “people person”.

Indeed, there’s part of me which wants to hear more about her earlier escapades, based in particular on some crisply effective excursions into termination with extreme prejudice: “Several yards away, a man smoking a cigarette stood with his back to her, an AK-47 at his side. He appeared to be alone. Without a word, she raised the gun and fired, hitting him twice in the back of the head.” As is though, this feels a bit like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes… after he had retired to take up bee-keeping.

Author: D.V. Berkom
Publisher: Duct Tape Press, available through Amazon, both as paperbacks and e-books as follows:

Part-Time Spy

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★★★
“Korea careers.”

An amiable piece of light fluff from Korea, while this probably doesn’t need to be 117 minutes long, the time passed comfortably enough. After many years of failing the civil service entrance exam, Jang Young-shil (Kang) finally succeeds and is rewarded with a contract job in the national security agency. However, she’s still mediocre, and is laid off. Fortunately, she overhears her boss (Jo) having been phone-phished out of $500,000 of departmental funds, and is the only agent available to go undercover in the ‘boiler room’ carrying out these scams. There, she recognizes another employee, Na Jung-an (Han) – having seen her take out a pickpocket on the subway, she knows Na is an undercover cop. The two women, of sharply disparate backgrounds and skill-sets, form an uneasy alliance, seeking to take down the charismatic boss of the con company, Min Seok (Namkoong).

The similarities to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Spy, extend to more than the title, being a similar combination of goofy comedy and action, with a lead who is far from conventionally pretty [the poster on the right is spectacularly misleading, as far as 50% of the actresses are concerned]. Though neither the comedy nor the action here prove quite as successful. For all Kang’s charms, she lacks the impeccable comedic timing of McCarthy, though her long list of former jobs e.g. dog whisperer provide some amusing moments – as well as coming in surprisingly handy, for example when the villains unleash their canines of war. Han isn’t exactly Jason Statham in the martial arts department either. That said, her anger management issues are a nice touch, making her far from the perfect choice to go undercover at a sketchy call-centre, and she can pull discontented faces with the best of them. Her efforts to seduce Min are delightfully OTT as well.

For an action-comedy, I found this surprisingly eye-opening too. The concept of having to pass an exam to get a job with the government, for instance. Or the entire voice-phishing thing, which seems to be an epidemic in Korea, if this movie is to be believed. In the film’s defense, it is possible that cultural differences such as these may partly explain why some of the humour occasionally falls painfully flat. However, even local reviewers seemed unimpressed with the more slapstick elements, so it probably isn’t just me who was highly underwhelmed by these aspects. It does build nicely, with the finale seeing our two heroines sent to scam an army officer out of $500,000 – money which Jang’s boss intends to “requisition” and replace the money he lost. Needless to say, things don’t quite unfold as expected, especially after another employee overhears Jang and Na talking, and realizes they are not who they claimed to be.

It’s the kind of film I can easily see being remade by Hollywood, perhaps with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as the tw… Oh, hang on: they already did that, and it was called The Heat. But in most ways, this is its equal: slickly-made and unashamedly commercial, if also largely forgettable.

Dir: Kim Deok-su
Star: Kang Ye-won, Han Chae-ah, Namkoong Min, Jo Jae-yoon

Wish Me Luck

  By

★★★½
“Life during wartime.”

This British TV series ran for three series from 1988 through 1990, with 23 episodes (each an hour long including commercials) in total. The same creators had previously been responsible for another WW2-based show, Tenko, about women in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore. The time period here is similar – the second half of World War 2 – but the focus moves from the Far East to Occupied Europe, in particular, France. At this point, the Allies were sending in agents to assist the local Resistance – and as we’ve documented before, this was one of the few areas where women were used as much as men.

While partly inspired by the exploits of Nancy ‘The White Mouse’ Wake, the show cover a range of characters, both at home on London and on the ground in Vichy France. The main one present throughout is Faith Ashley (Asher), who eventually rises to run the department from London. She is responsible for recruiting (more or less) suitable candidates, getting them trained, and once they’re embedded, managing their needs. In the first season, it’s an exercise in contrasts: the two main agents sent over are an upper-class housewife Liz Grainger (Buffery), and factory worker from a refugee Jewish family, Matty Firman (Suzanna Hamilton). In the second and third series, the focus is more on Emily Whitbread (Snowden), an initially rather naive woman, barely old enough to join up. She quickly has to adapt and make some extremely difficult decisions.

It’s at its most effective when concentrating on ratcheting up the tension and depicting life in enemy territory, where the slightest slip can prove fatal. Interestingly, there’s no attempt made at the players speaking – or in most cases, even sounding – French. Yet, this is easy to forget, and soon seems natural, with their English accents still conveying information about their position and social standing. Less successful, with the exception of the final season, are the aspects portraying life in Britain. These are just not very interesting, save for the last batch of episodes. In those, Faith tries, with increasing desperation, to get much-needed resources for a rebellion, when the higher-ups are far more concerned with matters elsewhere. It’s an object lesson that the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few – yet the consequence for the few are no less tragic as a result.

The last season also has considerably loftier production values, with location shooting in France, and significantly more military hardware on view. However, the cheap music still undercuts this, apparently being played by a three-man band, when the action really needs something sweeping and orchestral. That still doesn’t destroy the tension of the final few episodes, when it becomes increasingly clear that the makers have no intention on letting all the characters walk off into the sunset unharmed. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because in wartime, there’s really no such thing as a happy ending.

Creators: : Jill Hyem & Lavinia Warner
Star: Jane Asher, Jane Snowden, Michael J. Jackson, Kate Buffery

Miss Bala (2018)

  By

★★½
“Cultural appropriation”

As the lazy joke goes, I preferred this film the first time I saw it, when it was called… Well, actually, it was called Miss Bala then too, this being a remake in (mostly) English of the Mexican movie from 2011. Its remake status probably explains why both protagonist and cartel boss antagonist are American citizens: convenient to avoid those pesky subtitles, yet it also allows the director to avoid blaming poor, downtrodden Mexico – in an interview, she pinned the drug business on “American demand, and of course, American guns.” Calling that a gross simplification is an insult to gross simplifications.

It keeps a similar structure to the original, albeit with tweaks necessary to get a Yankee involved. Rather than a beauty pageant contestant herself, Gloria (Rodriguez) is a Los Angeles make-up artist visiting her friend in Tijuana. After witnessing a nightclub shoot-out after which her friend vanishes, and making an incredibly stupid decision to tell the first cop she sees about it (really, I’ve spent one weekend in Mexico and know better than that), she ends up under the thumb of Los Estrellas, a cartel run by Lino Esparza (Córdova) – hey, also brought up in America! After unwittingly dropping off a car-bomb that blows up a DEA safe-house, Gloria also ends up under the thumb of Brian Reich (Lauria), a federal agent who makes her operate as an undercover mole inside the gang.

When Chris discovered the director of this was responsible for Twilight, she paused and then asked with a concerned expression, “They’re not going to turn into sparkly vampires, are they?” Fortunately, they don’t. Yet the adjustment in story is almost as problematic, because it seriously weakens Gloria’s motivation to comply. Rather than having her direct family be threatened, it’s just some friend and her little brother; we’re given no reason to understand her desperate willingness to do anything to save them. There’s also the sudden transformation into a heavily-armed beauty queen at the end, where one quick session of “Fire at them from the pointy end” training apparently turns her into the evening-gown clad angel of death shown in the picture.

Hardwicke even complained the film’s poor reviews were due to male critics preferring the more passive heroine of the original. Uh, no. It’s more that the 2011 version didn’t go full Peppermint – and with less justification. It was because its original heroine was atypical which made it work better. The remake manages to reproduce the flaws, while weakening the best element: depicting the futility of struggling against immensely powerful forces on both sides of the law, which really don’t care, save for how they can use you for their own purposes. Depressing, maybe; yet it had a realism this version could use, wanting instead to be both empowering wish-fulfillment and gritty narcocinema. Hardwicke should have swallowed her faux-feminist outrage, and just given us 90 minutes of Rodriguez shooting shit up in a long dress.

Dir: Catherine Hardwicke
Star: Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Matt Lauria, Ricardo Abarca

Anna

  By

★★★★
“Luc Besson’s Greatest Hits”

Before getting to the film, we probably have to address the elephant in the room: the rape accusations against Luc Besson. Though police investigations have finished, with the allegations unproven, they definitely have damaged Besson’s reputation. While in Europe, the basic rule remains “Innocent until proven guilty”, in Hollywood a mere accusation in a newspaper headline or online can potentially destroy a man’s career these days. And while some people are guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, I personally strongly doubt that the small, overweight, apparently introverted Frenchman is a serial rapist.

Honestly, if I go by what I heard about countless actors and directors working in Hollywood today, I probably wouldn’t be able to watch any movie. The logical thing for me is to separate a creator and what you know about them (or perhaps, think you know) from their work. Beethoven is said to have been a terrible, unsympathetic misogynist but his music is great. Klaus Kinski was one of the most controversial actors of the 20th century, with a reputation for unpleasantness at best; yet there is no doubt of his acting genius that shines through almost any movie he made in his life.

Right now though, a whiff of suspicion, and you are already dead to Hollywood. Besson might be slightly safer, as he is not part of the business there, and lives in Europe. But I wonder if the allegations may have led to some kind of semi-sabotage by his distributor in the US. For hardly any cinemagoer seemed to have known about his new movie, Anna. Even though I was told the film got some TV spots on cable channels and a trailer in cinemas, it seemed marketing was seriously toned down, and the movie rushed out of cinemas shortly after release.

[Note from Jim. I can confirm this. We were on holiday in Scotland when it came out. By the time we returned to Arizona and got over the jet-lag, it was basically gone. Anna opened in 2,114 screens. Three weeks later, it was on… 92. I still haven’t seen it, which is why I was glad Dieter stepped in with a review]

There seems almost to be some kind of unspoken agreement just to bury this movie quietly. Heck, even here in Germany the film wasn’t advertised apart, from the online trailer. I definitely didn’t see a trailer for it at the cinema, or big posters for it anywhere. If I had not consciously looked out for this movie, due to being a fan of Luc Bessons work over the last 36 years, I probably wouldn’t even have known about it.

But to put things in a more objective perspective: over his entire career Besson has had only two real successes in the US: One was Leon (1994), which made Jean Reno a big star and started the career of Nathalie Portman; the other was Lucy (2014), the break-through film for Scarlett Johannson, now the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Heck, even now-loved cult movie The Fifth Element (1997) (originally supposed to be a two-parter!) was considered a flop in America at the time of release. What has always been Besson’s bread and butter is the rest of the world. Though in the beginning he had some detractors in his own country for a style which was seen as “Americanized” and “not really French enough”.

Nevertheless, it seems kind of strange when looking at the box-office numbers of Besson’s movies in the last few years. Lucy was an international success, that in the US alone made $126 million, while Anna closed with takings of under $8 million.  It’s easy to create conspiracy theories looking at these numbers. But in between came Valerian and the City of the 1000 Planets (2017). Despite being the most expensive European movie ever, with a budget of about $178 million, took a disappointing $41 million in the US (though made its costs back in the rest of the world). And yes, some of his movies never were commercial successes – regardless of their quality – such as Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), The Lady (2011) or the sequels to his Arthur and the Invisibles animated movie.

Why do I mention all of the above? I guess, because I think that Anna may be a turning point in Besson’s career – perhaps more than you may think. Valerian seemed to have cost his French Eurocorp studio money, despite pre-sales and – according to Besson – only a small financial investment by Eurocorp itself. It seems that about two-thirds of the company are now in the hands of foreign investors, and they don’t want Besson to continue in the chairman’s seat of his own company. With Valerian under-performing, and Anna a theatrical flop despite a modest budget (reportedly around $35 million), we could be looking at the last big movie of Luc Besson.

Sure, he has always shown that he can make effective and very good movies with small budgets such as his debut movie, The Last Battle (1983) or Angel-A (2005). Indeed, maybe the quality of his movies increases, as his budget decreases. But the big question is if the 60-year old director really wants to start again from the ground up, especially given his age. He’s not the youthful punk he started as. In Europe (or at least France) he is what Spielberg might have been in mid-90s Hollywood. But then Spielberg grew up and matured; can Besson do that? Does he even want to? I also think you can compare him with contemporary James Cameron, a famous director who now mostly has others direct his productions. Certainly, I don’t think Besson has to prove anything to anyone, anymore.

With all that said, how is Anna? Answer: surprisingly good. I went into this movie not expecting much at all (going from the quasi non-existent marketing). Yes, it’s true, it’s not one of the “greats” of Besson, and he also doesn’t re-invent the genre wheel with this. If you have seen his classic Nikita (1990) which has been exploited by Hollywood ad infinitum, and her spiritual successors Atomic Blonde (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018), you know the story. And knowing these kind of movies, you’ll be familiar with a story arc, you can figure out from the very beginning.

But then, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the 1000th Marvel movie following the same paths of its superhero predecessors. In the end, the question is how the cook combines the ingredients to bake his cake. And this cake tastes good – but definitely not great. While the DNA of Nikita is everywhere, it never reaches the fine and poetic quality of that movie. It feels like a modernized remake, with Besson obviously having seen Sparrow and Blonde too, and saying to himself: “I can do better!”

And I think, subjectively, he mainly succeeds. Red Sparrow was a very heavy, slow-burning spy movie without what I would really call action scenes. Atomic Blonde had impressive action choreography, which Besson definitely tried to top here – up to the individual viewer, whether or not he succeeded. But Blonde also had, at least for me, a strange, difficult to figure-out ending, and characters which were all cool, to the point of emotionless. My feeling is that Besson took the best elements of all these movies – the intrigue of Sparrow; the action of Blonde – and combined it with his own style.

What I always notice when watching one of his movies, is that Besson can be an incredibly visual director if he wants. He knows how to do great mise-en-scéne, how to give his movies a lot of kinetic energy. The scenes are not too long, but also not so short you can’t invest yourself into them emotionally. He inserts moments of genuinely funny humor and sometimes almost kitschy emotional scenes, that are a component of his own unique style – and, unfortunately, usually not to be found in American action movies. And when he gets playful, the editing and the music of his “house composer”, Eric Serra (Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element, and many others), join each other in a perfect marriage that’s just incredible fun to watch.

Do I sound too enthusiastic? I don’t think so. Besson is an excellent director. This doesn’t exclude him from creating flawed movies or average scripts; yet even his failures are – at least for me – still more satisfying and interesting than an average “successful” conveyor-belt Hollywood movie. He is an almost classic storyteller, telling his very own stories, depending on what he focuses his current interest on in the moment. One quality I think I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, is his ability to lead actors. All of the performances here, including Evans, Murphy and Mirren are very good. But the one that really impressed me is supermodel-turned-actress Sasha Luss, who previously played a smaller role as an alien in Valerian.

She’s not perfect: Luss playing a poor Moscow-wife selling “matroshkas” on the market, can’t disguise what a beauty she is. Compare that to Anne Parillaud’s ugly punk-girl-duckling in Nikita who only turns into a beautiful swan later in the movie. Still, Luss comes across as very charismatic, believable as a model (not a stretch!) and seductress, as well as a murderous killer for the KGB. Honestly, I was really impressed: for me, she gives a better performance than the enigmatic but also somewhat bland Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.

But then a talent of Besson is being able to insert some “emotionality” into his characters. This adds just enough to make them appear more believable than many similar characters in Hollywood movies. Here, he even manages to make Helen Mirren’s role, playing a cold-hearted merciless KGB trainer and mentor of Anna, comparable to Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love and Charlotte Rampling in Red Sparrow, into an oddly likable character.

What seemed a problem for some cinema-goers was the non-linear storytelling of the movie. The film jumps a couple of years ahead, a few months back, another year forward and so on, allowing it to surprise the audience with some unexpected revelations. I personally had no problems with that – but some people don’t like to use their brains at all when watching a movie. Their loss. :) Where I’d say Besson fails is in what I call the “model photo shooting scenes”. Here, he overdoes it so much, to the point you wonder if he intended to make a satire about haute couture. These scenes come across as exaggerated and almost cringe-worthy. Fortunately, they don’t occupy too much of the film’s running-time.

The basic story is of a trained secret agent who works for one side, becomes a double agent, then is essentially only working to get back their personal liberty, and isn’t a new one. This plot goes back at least as far as Triple Cross (1966), a WWII-spy movie from Bond director Terence Young, with Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe and many others. The comparisons to Nikita really write themselves. There are many similarities to the movie that, 29 years ago, more or less signified Besson’s breakthrough out of arthouse cineaste circles. Despite this, they are different, probably due to a different contemporary zeitgeist, which made the movie an interesting viewing experience for me.

Gone is the girl who never had a choice, as Anna originally applied to work for the KGB by herself – though ends in a situation where she can’t quit. This makes for a different dynamic to Parillaud in Nikita, although I also don’t really buy the emotional and psychological interest in being a killer for the state here. Nikita was a desperate girl, slowly breaking apart through having to follow the orders of her handler while wanting a normal life with her boyfriend. Anna comes across as a hard professional: she is not just Nikita but also “Victor, nettoyeur” in one person, andcomes off as remarkably cold-blooded.

In one scene, a not unsympathetic, shy Russian who is an illegal arms trader confesses his love for her; she kills him in the moment she has the relevant information. Then there is that scene in a restaurant, which makes the similar scene in Nikita look like a Disney movie in comparison. Anna leaves a room full of bloody corpses behind her; the word “overkill” sprang immediately into my mind! A normal “relationship” with her girlfriend seems possible; but Anna hardly seems to care for her, since said friend is mainly a cover. At the same time she has passionate sex with Evans and Murphy, and calls them her family. But is this just another deception? You never know if she cares for anyone at all, or if she is just manipulating everyone around her emotionally and sexually, for use later in her intricate plan.

That may be the weakest point in Anna’s character. She is just bigger than life, out-fighting, out-manipulating, out-smarting and out-sexing anyone. Somehow, Nikita seemed much more grounded in reality, and more believable because of that human character. Anna is purely professional, always ahead of the game, even when you think: “Well, now she is done!” You wonder why she needs all these complicated components of her plan, when she seems quite capable off killing off half an army of KGB-employees [And you definitely don’t want to play chess with her!]

Other aspects: It’s nice to have actual Russians speaking real Russian in a movie. I had a hard time when watching Red Sparrow with all these Hollywood actors speaking English with Russian accents. It just sounded fake. The solution here is much better: You have Russian actors speaking Russian, maybe the main actors say a thing or two in Russian, then you change to the “normal” language. I didn’t feel that it broke the illusion, since it was well enough established that the characters were Russian. Kudos also to Alexander Petrov, who plays Anna’s original Russian criminal “boy-friend”, Piotr, an especially unsympathetic human being. It’s an important and effective role, letting the film establish a feeling of reality before it shifts into the more fantastic spy genre we know and love. John le Carré it ain’t!

Some production credits stood out for me. Shanna Besson, one of Luc’s daughters did the stills photography for the movie, and his wife Virginie Besson-Silla seems to have been involved in some capacity. Responsible for the car stunts is David Julienne, who has worked for some Besson productions already in the past. I suspect he is related to Remy Julienne, the famous driver responsible for all the great car chases in the Bond movies of the 80s and also some Jean-Paul Belmondo films. [There was a major issue between Remy and Europacorp, after a stunt went wrong during the filming of Taxi 2]  As mentioned, the music of Eric Serra, is as remarkable as ever, and I had a big smile on my face when in one specific scene he directly referenced a melody from his own Nikita soundtrack. I notice and appreciate little things like that.

Visually the film is – as can be expected from a Besson movie – stunning and top-notch. There are some beautiful shots of cities and once again Besson reminds us why people love Paris so much. Unlike so many modern secret agent and action movies, Anna leaves you with a real sense Besson and crew jetted around half the world to capture as many beautiful images as possible for this movie. The end titles included thank-yous to the cities of Moscow, Belgrade, Guadalupe, Milan and – of course – the studios of Paris. 

Unfortunately, Anna is a commercial flop right now. Sure, the film is less than subtle, and Nikita stays unchallenged as a genre icon. We might have seen this kind of story a bit too often recently – and probably will again next year when Marvel’s Black Widow comes out. But among the modern entries in the genre, it is easily one of the best. Besson doesn’t quite reach the quality of his formative years as a director, and I doubt he ever will. But as typical genre fare, even if exaggerated in the depiction of its female main character, this is solid entertainment, and should be enjoyed as such.

I just hope this isn’t Besson’s last movie, since he is still better than most of those trying to walk in his footsteps. We’ll see!

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren