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Anna
Movie

Anna

2019 • Action, Thriller

Woke Score
7
out of 10

Plot

Anna (Sasha Luss) is a young beautiful girl who managed to make a career in the fashion world. More recently, she was a simple model from Moscow, but in a very short time, she was able to enter the elite. Once she entered the hotel of an influential and very dangerous person, after which a whole mountain of corpses was discovered there. The girl is being interrogated by special services, but she has absolutely nothing to tell them on this fact. She looks scared, and no one suspects her. Anna goes free and begins preparing for a new business. Under the guise of a fragile beauty, is hiding the world's most dangerous assassin, who has not yet misfired.

Overall Series Review

Anna is a hyper-stylized action thriller about a young Russian woman, Anna, who is coerced into becoming a KGB assassin after escaping a life of domestic abuse. She is immediately highly competent, utilizing her beauty and combat skills to become the world's most dangerous operative while posing as a high-fashion model. The story revolves around her elaborate plan to outmaneuver the male heads of both the Russian KGB and the American CIA who seek to exploit and control her. The central conflict is a purely secular, individualistic struggle for freedom and self-determination against totalitarian and patriarchal systems. The movie contains graphic violence, numerous strategic sexual relationships (both heterosexual and homosexual), and a moral landscape defined entirely by the situational ethics of the espionage world. The narrative is heavily focused on female competence and male ineptitude or toxicity in positions of power, culminating in a female-led takeover of a major intelligence agency.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

Characters are judged by their skills in assassination and espionage, promoting a form of meritocracy within a morally bankrupt system. The protagonist and most main characters are Russian and European, and there is no focus on a racial hierarchy or vilification of whiteness; the conflict is geopolitical and systemic. Diversity is not a narrative theme.

Oikophobia4/10

The film sets Anna's journey in the context of escaping a 'patriarchal society' and a life of 'slavery' under the Soviet/post-Soviet system, which is framed as fundamentally corrupt and oppressive to women. Her ultimate goal is to abandon her home culture and country entirely for a life of individual freedom in a new, unspecific place (Hawaii). This is a strong critique of a specific system, but not a broad attack on Western civilization or heritage; it critiques the Russian state and its intelligence apparatus.

Feminism8/10

Anna is a 'Girl Boss' who is instantly brilliant and deadly in her assassin and modeling careers. She is constantly a step ahead of all the powerful male characters who seek to use her. Her female mentor, Olga, also manipulates the system to rise to the top position after the removal of a male leader. Men are consistently portrayed as abusers, manipulators, or bumbling, outsmarted intelligence agents. The movie centers on a career and personal freedom as the only fulfillment, with no reference to family or motherhood.

LGBTQ+7/10

The protagonist is explicitly portrayed as having romantic and sexual relationships with both male handlers and a female model, Maud. The relationship with the female model is a significant part of her cover and features sex scenes, normalizing alternative sexualities without political commentary. The narrative does not focus on gender theory or deconstructing the nuclear family, but her relationships are non-normative and entirely strategic.

Anti-Theism6/10

The movie operates within a world of moral relativism where all characters, regardless of nationality (Russian or American), are immoral and driven by power, manipulation, and violence. Traditional religion is completely absent from the narrative, suggesting a spiritual vacuum where morality is entirely subjective to the spy's mission and personal survival. This lack of any higher moral law places the film firmly in the moral relativist camp.