Anna is proving to be a surprise hit with Netflix viewers, but the action movie is more than just a little bit reminiscent of a Jennifer Lawrence movie from 2018. Despite first being released five years ago, Luc Besson’s Anna has found new popularity on Netflix, where it has been making its way up the charts. However, Anna shares more than a few things in common with a divisive Jennifer Lawrence film that’s so far yet to have its day in the sun.
Described as an action thriller, Anna tells the story of a young woman hired by the KGB who decides to defect to the other side and work as a double agent. The cast of 2019’s Anna includes Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, and Helen Mirren. Yet, despite Anna‘s clever twists, as well as its inclusion of well-known actors, the movie was ultimately a critical and commercial failure. Anna‘s newfound success on Netflix is something that few could’ve predicted, especially given the existence of a superior Jennifer Lawrence film with a similar plot.
Directed by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence, Red Sparrow is an adaptation of the 2013 novel of the same name by Jason Matthews. As well as Jennifer Lawrence, the movie also stars Joel Edgerton, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, and Matthias Schoenaerts. Upon its release, Anna was widely compared to Red Sparrow, and with good reason. Both are about young Russian women who are trained to be spies, both involve their protagonists defecting to the other side and becoming double agents, and both feature highly stylized action sequences.
While it would certainly be unfair to imply that Anna copied Red Sparrow, especially given that their proximity renders this virtually impossible and that both are effectively rehashes of Besson’s Nikita, which itself is reminiscent of Marvel’s Black Widow, it wouldn’t be controversial to suggest that Red Sparrow is the better movie. It’s important to note that Red Sparrow wasn’t itself a glowing success; it very much divided critics and slightly underperformed at the box office. However, with its committed central performance and clever ideas, Red Sparrow is arguably more deserving of the kind of re-evaluation that Anna is currently receiving.
Although there are broad narrative similarities between Red Sparrow and Anna, the Jennifer Lawrence thriller offers a much darker take on the subject. While both films touch on their protagonists’ harrowing backstories, Red Sparrow is much more explicit in portraying violence on screen. Whereas Anna‘s scenes are often deliberately and unbelievably over-the-top, Red Sparrow is disturbingly grounded, with the film using extreme violence as a means of making the movie’s stakes crystal clear to the audience.
There are also clear storytelling distinctions between Anna and Red Sparrow. Even though both movies center on espionage, and therefore, by necessity, involve intricate double-crosses, obscure motivations, and killer twists, Red Sparrow follows a much more traditional structure. The film proceeds largely chronologically, with Jennifer Lawrence’s character development and progression fairly consistent. By contrast, Anna uses flashbacks to tell a more complex, non-linear story – a device that goes some way towards explaining the film’s mixed reputation.
Although the film’s deliberately unconventional structure and clear parallels to director Luc Besson’s earlier work were seen by some critics as a negative, it’s not true to say that Anna was a total failure. In fact, in many regards the movie’s more effervescent action sequences and speedy pacing made it much more successful than Red Sparrow. While Jennifer Lawrence’s film tried to emphasize plot and intrigue, Anna made up for many of its weaker plot elements with explosive action sequences of the sort that were largely absent from Red Sparrow.
This discrepancy between the two projects is reflected in their popularity with audiences. Although Red Sparrow widely outperformed Anna financially, viewers who actually saw Besson’s movie were much more positive towards it than those who saw Red Sparrow. According to Rotten Tomatoes‘ audience scores, Red Sparrow secured a mediocre 51% positive reviews, whereas Anna managed to achieve an impressive 81%. The discrepancy between critics and audiences highlights how Anna‘s impressive visuals elevate it above Red Sparrow in many viewers’ eyes.
It was hoped that Red Sparrow would be the start of a new franchise for Lawrence following the conclusion of the Hunger Games series. With a worldwide box office total of $151 million on a $69 million budget (via Box Office Mojo), Red Sparrow didn’t quite perform well enough to warrant a sequel. Nevertheless, its financial performance is far better than that of Anna, which only managed to earn $31 million in total. Additionally, Red Sparrow‘s Rotten Tomatoes score of 45%, though nothing special, is notably better than Anna‘s score of 33%, demonstrating how the former is generally regarded as the better movie.
Red Sparrow‘s higher earnings can be attributed to Jennifer Lawrence’s star power. When the film was released, Lawrence was already the face of two major movie franchises, The Hunger Games and X-Men. In comparison, Sasha Luss only had one other acting credit when she starred as the lead in Anna. This also likely had an impact on both films’ critical response, with Lawrence’s Oscar-winning talents being a big reason why Red Sparrow was liked by many. Add to that a plot that was all action and no story and Anna was always going to be the inferior film.
Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo, CinemaScore