Cillian Murphy & Luke Evans' Action Thriller Flop Is Getting A Second Life On Netflix

There are so many movies out there that no matter what, some of them will slip through the cracks. One such film is "The Fifth Element" and "Léon: The Professional" director Luc Besson's 2019 action thriller "Anna," which got poor reviews and disappeared from the theaters after making just $7.7 million in the U.S. However, critics aside, the people who have seen the film have enjoyed it, which makes it the exact type of flop that deserves to get a second life on Netflix.  

This is exactly what has happened. "Anna" has arrived on the streaming service, and people have taken notice — so much so that it's the most-watched film on Netflix's Top 10 movies in the U.S. This may have something to do with the film's stellar cast, which includes Academy Award winners Cillian Murphy and Helen Mirren, as well as Luke Evans. In particular, Murphy has become dramatically more famous in the years following the "Anna" premiere thanks to his Oscar-winning "Oppenheimer" performance, so it isn't surprising that fans are keen to check out his lesser-known work. 

Set in the 1990s, "Anna" tells the story of the titular KGB assassin (Sasha Luss), who becomes a pawn in a tug-of-war between spy agencies. With Cillian Murphy's Lenny on the CIA side and Luke Evans' Alex and Helen Mirren's Olga as Anna's KGB contacts, the movie has plenty of action and espionage twists, as everyone is playing their own game and Anna is making plans to gain her freedom. 

Luc Besson made "Anna" after his grand 2017 sci-fi movie "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." While his "The Fifth Element" became the ultimate sci-fi cult classic, he failed to recapture lightning in a bottle. Instead, "Valerian" flopped at the box office rather dramatically, so it's not strange that the filmmaker wanted to try something a little less labor-intensive with "Anna." While critics have pointed out that this makes "Anna" seem extremely familiar to viewers who have seen Besson's previous assassin-themed films, the movie's Netflix success proves that this hasn't stopped viewers from enjoying it for what it is.