Review of Anna (2013) by Cheshirecad — 26 Mar 2015

As a story focusing on the characters, their relationships, and the shifting sense of distrust they have for each other as well as their own perceptions, Anna works very well. The actors pull off the subtle clues of their personalities, and the whole sense of trust and distrust really is milked to full effect.

But when the plot actually cashes in its suspense in the form of plot twists, it becomes almost enragingly stupid. For mild spoilers: Someone falls into a trap, which is a theme of the whole movie. But they fall into the extremely convoluted trap with the perfectly-coordinated illogic of a slasher-movie bimbo. And then a police investigation comes to the perfectly exact wrong conclusion, using some logical deductions that make utterly no sense to the audience as they're coming out of their mouths, and even less sense when they actually think about it.

This is a movie that spends its entire run selling itself as smart, and succeeding. And then it concludes by using the summer-blockbuster technique of "Throw around lots of details that deliberately don't make any sense, and hope that it confuses people enough to make it look intricate and clever." Which doesn't work even in less cerebral movies, or when you're using it to save the day, and not to betray people's delicate trust in justice.