My Nitpicks About the Anachronisms of “Anna” (2019)
Foreword:
This was originally written on Thursday January 20, 2022. I recently made some edits to my Fifth Element review to include a Luc Besson movie that I didn’t know about until recently and didn’t list as a Luc Besson movie that I hadn’t seen. That movie was Dogman 🐕 (no relation to the recent 2025 animated film Dog Man 🐕), it’s an action thriller movie that was released in France 🇫🇷 in 2023, but released in the US 🇺🇸 in 2024. I didn’t even know that movie even existed until I saw Martin’s list of the worst movies of 2024 on the Double Toasted YouTube channel, where it was included as one of the worst movies that Martin had seen last year. You’ll see what I meant in that Fifth Element review about Martin hating Luc Besson when you watch that video because he really hates Luc Besson. He calls him “immature” in the section where he talks about Dogman 🐕.
I mean, I agree with him, at least when it comes to current day Luc Besson. He’s certainly has that “mid-life crisis” energy when though he’s 65 years old. 60s are still kind of middle aged, it’s the transition from middle age to old age, you officially go from simply being old to becoming a full-on senior. Current day Luc Besson may or not also be a rapist, sexual assaulter, or a sexual harasser if any of the accusations levied against him are to be believed. I mean, if those accusations are true, then he was always like that, even back when he was young and still making good movies and not crap like Dogman 🐕 or his new movie this year, June and John, which was like a secret movie.
It was a secret project he was working on and keeping under wraps 🤫. No body knew about it, not even the people who edited his Wikipedia page, which is why there’s no mention of it on there, just that new Dracula movie he’s working on called Dracula: A Love Tale. June and John is a romantic comedy ❤️, not an action movie as I had originally assumed before I watched the trailer. It doesn’t look like any movie from Luc Besson that I’ve seen or know about. Maybe that’s why he wanted to keep it a secret 🤫 because it’s really nothing like his previous work. He just wanted to experiment and try something new, and not tell anyone about it until it was a month from its release. Its release date is March 13, 2025, that’s when it comes out.
That, or maybe he’s embarrassed of this movie, and wants to quickly get it out of the way, so that he can just focus on Dracula: A Love Tale, the project he actually wants to work and is actually proud. I mean, this was a movie he started working on COVID-19 pandemic 🦠😷, when everything was locked down and the industry was shuttered. A lot of projects got delayed, especially the bigger ones, and filmmakers like Besson made smaller movies to pass the time till they could finally make the bigger movies they really wanted to make, and also not go COVID crazy 🦠🤪.
So, he probably filmed this during the pandemic 🦠😷, and had it sitting in the can for three or four years, and is just releasing it now so that the world can see what he was making when the world was locked down. Like I said, maybe he’s embarrassed of this movie, and wants to quickly release in March 2025 to get out of the way so he can focus all of attention on Dracula. He probably wouldn’t be too broken up about it if not a lot of people end up seeing June and John, and it ends up bombing at the box office 💣, if it’s even getting a theatrical release. The trailer didn’t exactly say. It could get released in theaters in France 🇫🇷, but just dumped on streaming or video-on-demand in the United States 🇺🇸. I mean, that’s what sort of happened with Hellboy: The Crooked Man ♂︎, and that wasn’t even a foreign film, it was an American film 🇺🇸. An American film 🇺🇸 shot in Europe, but still an American film 🇺🇸, it certainly took place in America 🇺🇸, in the Appalachia region to be more specific.
June and John looks like a low budget indie movie, which is probably what it is. It being a COVID movie 🦠😷 makes all the sense in the world. It was likely a movie that Luc Besson made a few dollars 💵 (or euros 💶 I guess) and a ham sandwich 🥪 in-between making Dogman 🐕 and Dracula: A Love Tale, and he’s dumping it out in 2025, sandwiched between those two films. Get it? Because I said he made it with the budget of a few dollars 💵 and a ham sandwich 🥪, and I said that he sandwiched it in-between Dogman 🐕 and Dracula? See what I did there 😉? I’m really clever aren’t I 😅?…I’ll see myself out 😕. Maybe it was the other way around, and Dogman 🐕 was the project made in-between June and John and Dracula. I guess we won’t know for sure unless Luc Besson says something or someone writes a book 📖 about it. A memoir about Luc Besson’s entire filmography, which wouldn’t be a bad book 📖 actually, I read a book 📖 like that if somebody wrote it.
BTW, given that his upcoming Dracula movie is called Dracula: A Love Tale, I’m guessing it’s going to be a romance ❤️, be a more romantic take ❤️ on the Dracula story. So, he’s making two romantic movies ❤️ in a row, June and John and Dracula: A Love Tale, he’s really getting in touch with his sensitive side. Really embracing that old French stereotype 🇫🇷 that French people 🇫🇷 are uniquely romantic ❤️, more romantic than the Spaniards 🇪🇸 or the Italians 🇮🇹.
Speaking of Luc Besson movies that I forgot to mention, I completely forgot to mention that Joan of Arc movie he did called The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, starring Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc. It was the movie he made right after The Fifth Element, in the year 1999, which is why he cast Milla Jovovich in the lead role as Joan of Arc, he wanted to collaborate with her again after the success they had with The Fifth Element in 1997. It flopped at the box office and received mixed-to-negative reviews, and as you could probably expect from him, the movie wasn’t very historically accurate. But it is a movie of his that he directed that I did not see that I completely forgot and should’ve added to that list in those reviews.
So, Anna was not the most recent movie Luc Besson had directed, there was another one that was more recent than that movie. So, I had to edit both my Weekend in Taipei review and my Fifth Element review to include mention of Dogman 🐕. I have no intention of watching that movie BTW. But, speaking of Anna, I also edited my Fifth Element review to say that I intended to repost my review of Anna, Luc Besson’s 2019 female led spy thriller ♀︎ about a female Soviet spy ☭♀︎ seeking liberation for herself, but after looking at it again, it turns out that it wasn’t actually a review at all. It was a note talking about the anachronisms that annoyed me about the movie. Anachronisms, for those that don’t know, are things in historical films, historical TV, or historical literature that don’t belong in the time period being depicted in that particular work.
Like for example, Samurai Champloo having hip-hop music and modern urban-style graffiti in the Edo period of Japan 🇯🇵, Shanghai Knights having a Gatling-style machine gun and depicting Charlie Chaplin as a 9, 10, or 11 year old boy ♂︎ in 1887 (Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889, so his presence in the movie as a recurring side character would be impossible), The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time 🦈🌪️⏱️ having a Confederate flag (the “Stars and Bars”) during the American Revolutionary War 🇺🇸, and The Fifth Element having a 1930s fully automatic machine pistol variant of the Mauser C96 in 1914. There are other more egregious examples, but those were the ones that immediately came to my mind.
Anna is a historical movie, it’s historical fiction (it’s a period piece), and being that it takes place in 1990, one of the final years of the Soviet Union ☭, and being it was directed by Luc Besson, a man ♂︎ who has shown himself to not care about scientific or historical accuracy, there were plenty of anachronisms. I wrote this note initially to complain about the anachronisms that I was able to spot while watching the film. Truth be told, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched Anna, and I really don’t know what I would even think of it in light of everything that has happened since then.
I enjoyed it the last couple of times that I watched it, but my world view and my opinion on the Soviet Union ☭ and Russia 🇷🇺 have changed so much that I don’t even know if I would even still enjoy it now or not. The movie doesn’t necessarily portray the Soviet Union ☭ or the KGB in a particularly positive light, like the KGB is portrayed as evil, since the main protagonist Anna Poliatova is trying to escape from it, but not as evil as the United States 🇺🇸 and the CIA are portrayed as in the film. In fact, the CIA is presented as being more evil and more unscrupulous than the KGB is, and if anything the KGB is presented as a lesser evil or a necessary stepping stone for Anna’s own personal liberation.
Like, she initially joins the KGB to escape her shitty poverty-stricken life with her abusive boyfriend who’s in a gang or something. Luke Evans’s character Aleksander “Alex” Tchenkov mentions that she was in the Navy, or she applied to be in the Navy but didn’t join for whatever reason (I think it was because her abusive boyfriend didn’t let her from join because he wanted to keep her trapped, or she was applying for the Navy behind his back but ultimately decided not to actually sign up because she felt trapped in that abusive relationship and was worried about what her boyfriend would do to her if she actually joined the Navy), and that’s why the KGB was interested in recruiting her despite appearing at first on the surface to be a complete nobody.
Her boyfriend dies BTW, I think either Anna kills him or Alex kills him, one of those two, and that’s how she’s freed to join the KGB. It’s funny that these characters are named Anna and Alex, when I have two sisters who also have those names. Except my sister’s full name is Anastasia (just like the famed Romanov princess and animated film based on the myth of her survival by Don Bluth, though it’s pronounced differently than it how Anastasia Nikolaevna’s name was pronounced and how the film Anastasia pronounced it much to my sister’s chagrin since everyone kept pronouncing her name the way they pronounce it in the film and how the real Anastasia Nikolaevna’s name is generally pronounced) but it’s shortened to just Ana with one “n” (it’s even pronounced the same way that it is in this film even if it’s spelt differently, “Ah-nah”) and my other sister’s full name is Alexandria (a name she hates BTW) rather than Aleksander like Luke Evans’s character in this movie.
And then once Anna joins the KGB, and she sees how awful the KGB is, how it’s making her assassinate people, she tries to leave. She does this by double crossing the KGB and secretly joining the CIA, and working as a double agent for them. What exactly did she think KGB did? I mean, she lived in the Soviet Union ☭, surely she would’ve lived in fear of the KGB, or heard stories about the KGB surveying people, and arresting people who spoke out against the government or did things that the government didn’t approve of. The KGB was as much of a secret police as it was an intelligence agency. Surely, she would’ve heard stories about the KGB engaging in foreign intelligence and espionage, and assassinating people in other countries or in the Soviet Union ☭ itself that are enemies of the state. Why is she so surprised and shocked that the KGB kills people? As a Soviet citizen ☭, she should’ve probably have known that already.
Maybe, she isn’t so much surprised or shocked that the KGB kills people, but actually being an agent and doing the killing emotionally and mentally drains her 😞 (as being an assassin or hitman would for anyone who wasn’t trained to be one at birth), and even though she expected it and knew it was part of the job, she still gets tired of it and tries to leave the agency, even it was her one salvation from her shitty life, and ultimately proves to be her ticket to ultimate liberation. Finally, it ends with her leaving both the CIA and the KGB by faking her own death, and starting a new life under a new identity thanks to her KGB handler/mentor (Helen Mirren’s character) erasing her files and erasing her identity in exchange for her killing the current KGB chairman (the one that killed those CIA agents at the beginning) so she can take his place and become the new KGB chairman. Something that we know will only last for about a year since the Soviet Union ☭ would dissolve entirely in 1991, the year after the events of this movie take place.
But, like I said in the original text, maybe this movie takes place in an alternate timeline. Maybe Luc Besson is suggesting that under Olga’s leadership (that’s Helen Mirren’s character’s name), the KGB and the other Soviet hardliners ☭ never stage a coup against Gorbachev resorting in the Soviet Union ☭’s demise. So, the Soviet Union ☭ survives because Olga’s in charge of the KGB instead of that asshole guy ♂︎ who killed those CIA agents, and Olga of course would’ve never gotten that position without Anna’s help. So, Anna, in essence, saved the Soviet Union ☭ and prevented its collapse, even though she did all this to escape the Soviet Union ☭ and to escape the KGB and the CIA. Luc Besson is quite the alternate historian. Never knew he had it in him. Maybe he should get in touch with AlternateHistoryHub or my personal favorite TheAlrightyOne, or maybe Whatifalthist or Possible History instead, they’re more his caliber of alternate historians.
The movie does a lot of misdirection and plot twists, like every few minutes it felt like there was a plot twist (just to show that things weren’t really what they seemed), and each one kind of made the movie a bit more ridiculous thinking back on it, like they only had these plot twists to make the plot more complicated and seem more sophisticated than it really was. Like, when Anna starts with the CIA as a double agent, the movie initially wants you to think that her handler doesn’t know that she betrayed the KGB and is a double agent, but then later, it’s revealed that her handler was in on it the whole time, and that she wanted her to work with the CIA to get rid of the current KGB chairman so she can take his job and become the KGB chairman herself. And also, they revealed that she knowingly helped Anna fake her death and leave both the KGB and the CIA and start a whole new life, one more peaceful and without any of the danger and intrigue of the spy business.
But, while the movie is ostensibly about the emancipation of one woman ♀︎, it does have a political message to some degree, and from it seems to me now, that message was that while the United States 🇺🇸 and the Soviet Union ☭ were both evil, and the Cold War was bad, the United States 🇺🇸 was the more evil of the two. It was the real evil empire with its tendrils everywhere. And if you know anything about Cold War history, you’ll know that it is just not true.
Yes, the US 🇺🇸 was evil, and did a lot of bad things during the Cold War, but to suggest that it was worse than the USSR ☭ would be disingenuous. Not only was the USSR ☭ an empire undoubtedly, but it was a pretty evil empire that killed and subjugated millions of people across Eastern and Central Europe, and really elsewhere too. It was a totalitarian state that restricted the freedoms of everyone who lived in its border, and no one really benefited from that government being in power for 69 years (74 years if you count 1917 and the early Bolshevik years before the USSR ☭ was officially founded) except for the top elite.
The USSR ☭ did many of the things the USA 🇺🇸 did during the Cold War, except often times way worse since they were not constrained by moral quandaries or by democracy and the need to win elections. So no, the USA 🇺🇸 is not more evil than the USSR ☭, the Soviet Union ☭ was the far more evil of the two just by virtue than it was a totalitarian regime was willing to kill and did kill to stay in power, and not a democracy, not even a flawed democracy like the United States 🇺🇸. And the recent behavior of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 only proves this further. Russia 🇷🇺 even uses and weaponizes Soviet nostalgia ☭ to justify its current actions.
I wrote an update to this note or status update, or whatever you want to call it (I will tag it as a status update since it isn’t an actual review), that acted as an addendum where I basically apologized for any pro-Russia 🇷🇺, anti-Ukraine 🇺🇦, and anti-American 🇺🇸 opinions that may express within it in light of the then recent Russian invasion of Ukraine 🇷🇺🇺🇦. That invasion changed me in fundamental way, very much how the January 6 insurrection changed me. Before that, even though I had completely sworn off Trump and MAGA 🇺🇸, and tried to steer clear of any right-wing propaganda, I was still susceptible to Russian and Chinese propaganda 🇷🇺🇨🇳. I believed all the lies going up to the invasion that Russia 🇷🇺 wasn’t going to invade, and this was all just CIA and MI6 lies to justify a war against Russia 🇷🇺, and that NATO was the real aggressor trying to weaken and humiliate Russia 🇷🇺.
I also believed the lie that the US 🇺🇸 was the ultimate evil in the world, and Russia 🇷🇺 and China 🇨🇳 were both anti-imperialist liberators trying to free the world from US domination 🇺🇸. But, once the invasion happened, I realized that I was wrong and that I had been lied to. So, I stopped listening to all those pro-Russia 🇷🇺 and pro-China 🇨🇳 commentators that I had been listening to previously, and started listening to pro-Ukraine 🇺🇦 ones. At least, they started becoming stupid and I got tired of them, now I selectively listen to pro-Ukraine YouTubers 🇺🇦, the ones that I think are the best and are not subject to groupthink or susceptible to false narratives and misinformation.
But now that it’s been two years, in a couple of weeks it’ll be three years, and this war has become more entrenched and protracted, my opinions on the US 🇺🇸 at least have somewhat evolved, especially in light of Donald Trump becoming president again and vowing to expand the US 🇺🇸’s territory beyond its current borders and territorial ownership (the overseas territories it currently owns). The US 🇺🇸 is not pure evil, but it is not purely good either, Huey Li put it best in his video talking about the Trump administration’s recent imperialist policy proposals, when he said that the US 🇺🇸 is like a “knucklehead antihero,” an asshole most of the time but capable of doing good when it actually counts. But, the US 🇺🇸 is also capable of great evil, and it can go in a more evil direction if Trump does embark on an imperialist adventure to expand the US 🇺🇸’s territory.
The US 🇺🇸 will no longer be the standard bearer of liberal democracy (the main reason why there are so many democracies in the world today), or be a beacon to the world, a “shining city on the hill,” or even be the world’s policeman 👮♂️ (not that it was ever particularly good at that last one), but it will instead be playing Hitler or playing Putin I guess since Trump loves Putin 😍. He loves Hitler 😍 too, but Trump seems to be following more of Putin’s playbook rather than Hitler’s, and while there are similarities between the two, there are significant differences.
The United States 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺 have a lot more in common than either of them would like to admit. They are the two countries in the world who were never really forced to relinquish their empires. They never had to give any significant chunks of their territory or grant anyone who lived within their borders or lived under their rule independence for the sake of decolonization. Even if they give up some territory like the US 🇺🇸 granting the Philippines 🇵🇭 independence and giving up control of the Panama Canal 🇵🇦 and giving it to the Panamanians 🇵🇦, or the Russian Empire 🇷🇺 losing territory after the fall of the monarchy and the onset of the Russian Civil War 🇷🇺, or the USSR ☭ losing territory in the form of all the Soviet republics ☭ seceding and declaring independence after the failed August coup in 1991. But, those were minor compared to what the other European empires were forced to do, the US 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺 are still left with significant amounts of territory acquired over the centuries through colonialism. They were never fully decolonized.
There were increasing calls for Russia 🇷🇺 to decolonize after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 happened, especially since the Kremlin was sending all of the country’s ethnic minorities to fight in the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 rather than send ethnic Russians to fight in the war even if they make up the majority of the population, particularly those who live in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. But, so long as Putin is in charge, I doubt that will ever happen, in fact, even when Putin is no longer in power (when he dies or is forced out by external factors) I still don’t think it will happen. No Russian 🇷🇺, even those opposed to the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, is actually willing to give up territory, even if it wasn’t always theirs and it did belong to someone else before that.
The same really applies to the United States 🇺🇸. I mean, what American 🇺🇸 do you know that actually wants to give the entire Southwest region back to Mexico 🇲🇽 even though it was all stolen from Mexico 🇲🇽 in the Mexican-American War 🇺🇸🇲🇽 and before that? The US 🇺🇸 annexed Texas after Texas seceded from Mexico 🇲🇽 and declared independence. So, Texas was the first piece of Mexican territory 🇲🇽 the US 🇺🇸 took, and it was largely because of American settlers 🇺🇸 who lived in Texas while it was still under Mexican rule 🇲🇽 and didn’t want to live under Mexican rule 🇲🇽 and be subject to Mexican law 🇲🇽 that the US 🇺🇸 was able to acquire it. What American 🇺🇸 do you know wants to give up any of the territory acquired from France 🇫🇷 in the Louisiana Purchase? What American 🇺🇸 do you know wants to give up Alaska, or Hawaii, or Puerto Rico 🇵🇷?
There are Americans 🇺🇸 out there who do advocate for Puerto Rican independence 🇵🇷, but there are in the minority. The majority of Americans 🇺🇸 are fine with Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 being a US territory 🇺🇸, and in fact want it to become a state. The same goes for Guam 🇬🇺, American Samoa 🇦🇸, the Virgin Islands 🇻🇮, and the Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵, except no one is suggesting that any of those become states like they say for Puerto Rico 🇵🇷. I’ve certainly never heard any Americans 🇺🇸 say they want to gain any new territory, in fact most just want the US 🇺🇸 to keep the territory it already has, and not give up any territory or gain any territory. Even if they aren’t willing to grow the empire, they aren’t willing to shrink it either. They just want to maintain the status quo, keep things the way they are now in terms of the US 🇺🇸’s territory. They are not willing to decolonize all the way and give up the empire despite branding themselves as an “anti-imperialist power.”
During the Cold War, the US 🇺🇸 and the USSR ☭ successfully branded themselves as anti-imperialist powers, alternatives to the colonial empires of the past, but the reality was that they were empires too and engaging in many of the things they decried the European colonial empires of doing. Now, Russia 🇷🇺 and the US 🇺🇸 both have governments in power that want to expand their territory beyond their current borders. So, America 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺 will remain empire for many years to come, and will only stop being empires until they overreach and overextend themselves and are forced to give their empires by external factors.
On that note, Trump tripled down on his proposal to occupy Gaza after the White House tried to walk it back a bit. In fact, he said that he doesn’t want to merely occupy Gaza, but wants to keep it. Meaning that he has no intention of giving the territory to Israel 🇮🇱 if he goes through with this and when it’s all said and done, he wants to annex Gaza, and make it a US territory 🇺🇸, so that it he could turn it into a giant resort with hotels, restaurants, and casinos. He essentially wants to recreate the Las Vegas strip but on a much larger scale. He heard the name, the Gaza Strip and immediately went to the Vegas strip. This plan is of course absolutely abhorrent since it is essentially calling for ethnic cleansing. Trump wants to forcefully relocate all of the Palestinians 🇵🇸 out of Gaza and to other countries like Egypt 🇪🇬 and Jordan 🇯🇴 despite both saying that they wouldn’t accept any Palestinian refugees 🇵🇸 if Trump displaced them from Gaza.
There’s very little way Trump could achieve this without military force, despite him saying that he wouldn’t use the military to occupy Gaza. It’s just like all of Trump’s plans to annex more territory and make them apart of the US 🇺🇸, it can’t be done without military force because the people who actually live in those countries and territories aren’t willing to give up their sovereignty or their claim to the land so that they can become apart of the US 🇺🇸. They don’t want to be apart of the US 🇺🇸. So, if they aren’t to join the US 🇺🇸 voluntarily or if they don’t cave to economic pressure (which is what the tariffs on Canada 🇨🇦 are for), then there’s no other way than to use the military and take these countries and territories by force. You can already see the seeds of this since the Israelis 🇮🇱 have said that they would resume hostilities if Hamas fails to release the next batch of hostages by this coming Saturday.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Trump administration isn’t already secretly sabotaging the ceasefire agreement between Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas so that it will fail and the war will continue because then, they’ll have an excuse to intervene and take over Gaza. And if Trump does send troops to Gaza, then he’d be getting us involved in a quagmire that could last years, maybe even decades, and if not that, I could see a scenario similar to that of the Lebanese Civil War 🇱🇧 where the US 🇺🇸 is forced out of Gaza by a terrorist attack by Hamas, pretty much ending the US presence and involvement 🇺🇸 in the Israel-Hamas War 🇮🇱, ending Trump’s little real estate development project prematurely, and humiliating the US 🇺🇸 in the process. Either way, it will not go good for the United States 🇺🇸. But Trump will try it anyway.
In addition to this, while all this drama about Gaza was going on, a Republican lawmaker brought forth a ridiculous bill that would not only allow Trump to annex Greenland 🇬🇱 but also rename it “Red, White, and Blueland” 🤦♂️. I’m not kidding about that, that is an actual bill that was drafted and will be decided on by Congress. I guess the name Greenland 🇬🇱 is just too European for them, it’ll be American territory 🇺🇸 now, it needs to have an American name 🇺🇸 to reflect that, or perhaps they took the name too literally and were like, “Greenland 🇬🇱 isn’t green, we should rename it.” If it’s the latter that doesn’t make sense Greenland 🇬🇱 isn’t red, white, or blue either. So, what’s the big deal? Why change the name at all? It’s as dumb as renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, except even dumber because at least Gulf of America sounds like a real name for a real place unlike Red, White, and Blueland. Imagine on maps or on globes, they show Greenland 🇬🇱 but underneath the name, it says in parentheses () or asterisks *, Red, White, and Blueland, or there’s a note at the bottom saying “the US 🇺🇸 calls it ‘Red, White, and Blueland,’ but the rest of the world calls it Greenland 🇬🇱.” If Trump does take over Gaza, what would they rename it? Trumpland? The Trump Strip? The Old Glory Strip? Or the Freedom Strip?
I’m surprised no Republican lawmaker has proposed a bill to rename an American city 🇺🇸 after Trump at this point, like renaming New York City, New Trump City or something like that. Dictators do like renaming cities after themselves, just look at the communist governments ☭ of the 20th century. The Bolsheviks renamed Saint Petersburg (which had already been renamed to Petrograd during World War I due to the Russian government 🇷🇺 thinking that the name Saint Petersburg sounded “too German”) to Leningrad, the Soviets ☭ renamed Volgograd to Stalingrad (it hadn’t actually been named Volgograd before it was changed to Stalingrad, it was actually called Tsaritsyn before that, Volgograd was the name chosen by Khrushchev in 1961 during his de-Stalinization campaign), and the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 renamed Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City.
Speaking of things I’m surprised about, or rather, not really surprised about, given that Trump has announced that he wants to annex Canada 🇨🇦, Greenland 🇬🇱, and Gaza, and wants to retake the Panama Canal 🇵🇦 (which did belong to the United States 🇺🇸 before it was given to Panamanians 🇵🇦 in 1999), I wouldn’t be surprised if he said that he wants to annex all of Cuba 🇨🇺 next.
I mean, he’s already using GITMO as a concentration camp for undocumented immigrants (a good chunk of them may get converted to Islam ☪️ while imprisoned there, not normal moderate Islam ☪️, radical Salafist Islam ☪️), and the US 🇺🇸 has controlled Guantámano Bay for over a century now, so why not take all of Cuba 🇨🇺? It is controlled by a government that is hostile to the US 🇺🇸 after all, so why not topple that government, and just annex the whole country? Why not just own it?
I don’t mean to be giving Trump any ideas, but I’m just saying that it’s surprising to me that he hasn’t already said that he wants to take Cuba 🇨🇺 given that it’s an island nation next to the United States 🇺🇸, next to Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 which is already a US territory 🇺🇸, and it’s within the US periphery 🇺🇸. Maybe the Russian and Chinese governments 🇷🇺🇨🇳 would talk him out of it since they both have good relations with the Cuban government 🇨🇺. It is where Russia 🇷🇺 has been getting some of the troops they’ve been using to fight the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, since they either tricked Cubans 🇨🇺 into signing contracts with the defense ministry and becoming mercenaries or just straight up kidnapping Cubans 🇨🇺 and forcing them to fight in the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 against their will. Though I could see Trump trying to negotiate a deal with Russia 🇷🇺 to allow them to continue “recruiting” Cubans 🇨🇺 to fight in the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦.
That is of course if Trump is able to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. The big news today (or yesterday, depending on when I actually post this) is that Trump had a phone call 📞 with Putin in which they seriously began negotiating the end of the war. The call 📞 apparently went well, as well as a call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could actually go, as Putin indicated that he is open to negotiations, and Trump apparently said that he is willing to meet Putin in person in Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦. Conveniently a non-extradition country where Putin won’t be immediately arrested by the ICC ⚖️ as soon as he steps foot there.
He’s even thrown around the idea visiting Moscow, and having Putin visit Washington, so Putin will be setting foot in America 🇺🇸 for the first time in many years. This phone call 📞 between Putin and Trump comes days after Pete Hegseth, our new Secretary of Defense 😒, attended a NATO meeting in which he said that it is both unlikely that Ukraine 🇺🇦 will ever join NATO and unlikely that Ukraine 🇺🇦 will have its pre-2014 borders restored. He specifically said that it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine 🇺🇦 to have its pre-2014 borders restored.
Given that, and given that Trump said his call 📞 with Putin went “very well,” I’m guessing that they’re not negotiating a deal that will in anyway be beneficial or favorable to Ukraine 🇺🇦. This will be a deal that only favors Russia 🇷🇺, that only favors Putin, and no one else. With Tulsi Gabbard being confirmed as the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) 😒, US foreign policy 🇺🇸 will definitely move in a pro-Russia direction 🇷🇺, and the Ukrainians 🇺🇦 have definitely noticed. Zelenskyy put out a statement saying that the Ukrainian government 🇺🇦 will reject any peace deal, any negotiated settlement unless they are included in the process. They don’t want to end up like the Afghan government 🇦🇫, where the end of the war and the future of their country is decided without them, and that ends up weakening them and delegitimizing them.
The saddest part about all of this will be that you’ll have so-called anti-war and anti-imperialist leftists calling Trump a “master diplomat” and a “peacemaker” for negotiating this deal with Russia 🇷🇺, even if it ends with Russia 🇷🇺 keeping its territorial gains from the war, regrouping, rebuilding its military, and then restarting the war at a latter date at Putin’s convenience, or ends with Russia 🇷🇺 rolling into Kyiv and taking over all of Ukraine 🇺🇦. Though, I doubt the Ukrainians 🇺🇦 would let it get to that point since Zelenskyy is pretty much vowing to continue the war if the deal is bad and is negotiated out of bad faith without them, which is what it’s shaping up to be. Even if Trump insists that Ukraine 🇺🇦 will have a say in the peace talks.
And even if the US 🇺🇸 cuts military aid to Ukraine 🇺🇦, I doubt Europe will since they’re now finally starting to realize that they won’t be able to rely on the United States 🇺🇸 so long as Trump is in office, and have begun to decouple or at least derisk from the US 🇺🇸 in a military sense. So, they’ll continue military arms to Ukraine 🇺🇦 and allow them to keep fighting if the deal Trump and Putin make is a bad one that undermines Ukraine 🇺🇦’s sovereignty or territorial integrity in any way. If not, then Europe will prove that they’re no better than the US 🇺🇸 in that regard, and that they never really had Ukraine 🇺🇦’s back.
Since I mentioned Tulsi Gabbard being confirmed as the new DNI, I guess I should also mention that RFK Jr. was also confirmed as the new director of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 😞. Brace yourself for millions of dead kids, and diseases we had previously eradicated making a resurgence. Get ready for polio to make a comeback, and people having to be given iron lungs if they can afford it. If Medicaid and Medicare aren’t completely gutted by then. I contacted my senator to vote against RFK Jr.’s confirmation, but since Democrats are not the majority in the Senate, it wasn’t enough and the Republicans unanimously voted to confirm him as well as confirm Tulsi Gabbard, the two people who we really didn’t want to be confirmed.
The only Republican who didn’t vote to confirm them was Mitch McConnell, and he’s one of the main people responsible for why American politics 🇺🇸 are so bad, why things were able to get to this point where we have a president (as well as a shadow president in the form of Elon Musk) consolidating power and becoming a dictator before our very eyes and hardly anyone seems to notice or care. I won’t be surprised if Kash Patel gets confirmed as the new FBI director if he hasn’t already 😒. Every Republican who voted to confirm RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and every Republican who votes to confirm Kash Patel should be ashamed of themselves 😠, not that any of them will be.
Moving on to something a lot less serious and a lot less bleak, the Super Bowl was last Sunday, and I did not watch it. I’m not a football fan 🏈, I really didn’t know either of the two teams, I only vaguely know about the Chiefs because of Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift, and that relationship driven the Right crazy. Taylor Swift did attend the game, so did Trump only he left early, and started ranting about the game being rigged, and about the Chiefs winning because of Taylor Swift, about Taylor Swift being there and being booed (he said she was booed out of the stadium but that wasn’t true, she stayed even after she was booed), and about wanting get rid of the penny for some reason. Jokes on him because he got booed too, in fact, he got heckled, people shouting at him calling him a “traitor,” a “criminal,” a “rapist,” and a “bad president.” All words you can use to describe President Trump.
There were a lot of people on the Right saying that the Super Bowl was going to be rigged and the Chiefs were going to unfairly and illegitimately win because of Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift. I know, it sounds really stupid and it is, but this what they really believe or what they claim to believe. But, for all those conspiracy theories about the game being rigged and for all that bitching and moaning about Taylor Swift being at the game and cheering on that she got booed, they all ended up being wrong since the Eagles won the Super Bowl, not the Chiefs. The Chiefs lost pretty decisively, they got their asses handed to them from what I heard, so if that doesn’t prove that the Super Bowl wasn’t rigged and that the NFL is not biased towards the Chiefs because of Taylor Swift, I don’t know what will. If still believe any of that crap, then I’m sorry, you’re a lost cause and you have my pity.
I don’t even watch the Super Bowl even for the commercials or trailers for upcoming movies they have on there. What I usually like to do is that I like to wait until the game is over and then I watch all of the commercials afterwards, usually in one of those compilation videos that have the top 10 best Super Bowl commercials that year. But not even the commercials at this year’s Super Bowl were that good. Most of them were low energy cringeworthy corporate sludge that isn’t worth the millions of dollars 💵 that was used to pay for them. They weren’t worth the ad space they were given. I didn’t like any of the ones I saw.
But, apparently, the Halftime Show was pretty good. Samuel L. Jackson was there in an Uncle Sam outfit. The people who either loved or hated the Halftime Show seem to be split along party lines. The people who loved the Halftime Show tended to be liberal or left-wing, and the people who hated the Halftime Show tended to be conservative and right-wing because from what I’ve heard, the Halftime Show was more political this time around. Kendrick Lamar didn’t just bring his beef with Drake to the stage, but also brought politics into the mix (if Sam Jackson being dressed up as Uncle Sam wasn’t any indication), and openly criticized the Trump administration and its assault on DEI with his performance. I didn’t watch the Halftime Show, so I can’t say, but if that’s all true, then I admire the message.
The reason why I’m even talking about this, why I’m even bringing the Super Bowl at all is that I was reminded of the existence of Thunderbolts*. Don’t know why there’s an asterisk in the title, it seems to me that they made a mistake while typing it out and no one bothered to correct it, but that’s just how it’s written. Thunderbolts* is an upcoming MCU movie coming out in May of this year, and it will feature a lot of characters from the Black Widow movie from a few years ago, as well as Bucky Barnes (the Winter Soldier) from the Captain America 🇺🇸 movies and the Falcon and the Winter Soldier series and Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp 🐜, as they form a new team called the Thunderbolts.
I completely forgot that this movie even existed and I didn’t know it was even coming out this year, and seeing that it had a trailer at the Super Bowl reminded me of that. I guess I should’ve figured that it was coming out this year since they released the teaser trailer for it last year, but it’s been so long since then, and I didn’t watch the trailer because I’ve completely given up on the MCU. I haven’t watched an MCU movie since Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 🐜, that was the last one for me.
But, it seems that the MCU has gone back to its old model of releasing three movies a year with the release of Captain America: Brave New World 🇺🇸 this February, Thunderbolts* in May, and then finally The Fantastic Four: First Steps in July, where it will be competing directly with Superman (2025), the film that’s supposed to kick off the new DC cinematic universe called the DCU. Needless to say, I won’t be watching any of these movies, but it was interesting to comment on because until the Super Bowl hit, I thought Captain America: Brave New World 🇺🇸 and The Fantastic Four: First Steps were the only two MCU movies coming out in 2025. But no, there’s also Thunderbolts*, that stupid looking film 😒. Oh, and the live action Lilo & Stitch movie is coming out this year as well, I was reminded of that as well by the Super Bowl last Sunday. That movie is also coming out in May, the same month as Thunderbolts*. Won’t be watching that either.
The last thing I want to talk about here is that I decided to watch and review the 2020 asteroid film ☄️ Greenland 🇬🇱 starring Gerard Butler. I decided to finally watch that movie after passing on it for so long after watching PointlessHub’s recent video talking about both Deep Impact and Armageddon ☄️. He mentioned Greenland 🇬🇱 at the end and talked briefly about what it was about. He said that it was a much more dark, gritty, and serious take on the asteroid impact ☄️ scenario (or comet impact in this case), sort of like Deep Impact, but unlike Deep Impact, it was a much more cynical film especially in how portrayed the government.
Deep Impact portrayed the government with a much more rosy way, it naïvely portrayed the government as a benevolent kindly figure who always had the people’s best interests at heart ❤️ and the people always believed and trusted. While Greenland 🇬🇱 portrayed the government in a much more negative way, it portrayed the government as being much more callous and untrustworthy, willing to lie to the American people 🇺🇸 to save face and only caring about protecting the elite than protecting the average everyday people.
In the film, the government doesn’t tell anyone that the comet is going to hit the Earth 🌎, they just lie. People only find out about how dire the situation is when a fragment of the comet hits a city in Central Florida. And the movie apparently goes from there, showing the collapse of society as we know it and people killing each other just to survive. I also assume that that movie’s called Greenland 🇬🇱 because the top secret bunkers used to shelter the most important people within the federal government from the incoming comet disaster are in Greenland 🇬🇱. Greenland 🇬🇱 is the safest place on Earth 🌎 from the comet in this movie’s world. It’s funny that I’m talking about a movie called Greenland 🇬🇱 when Greenland 🇬🇱 has been in the news for the last few weeks because Trump keeps talking about wanting to annex it and change its name to sound more American 🇺🇸.
If Trump does succeed in annexing Greenland 🇬🇱, and does take that one Republican lawmaker’s suggestion and renames it, will this mean that the movie will have an antiquated name? Not that the rest of the world will recognize America 🇺🇸’s control over Greenland 🇬🇱 or recognize the name change, so the title Greenland 🇬🇱 will still be valid at least elsewhere in the world. I mean, this movie was made during Trump’s first term in office, so it’s not surprising that it has a movie cynical and pessimistic view of the federal government.
This intrigued me, this actually made me want to see it, the way PointlessHub was describing the movie. If I had known it had a political message to it and presented the US government 🇺🇸 in a less than favorable light, I might’ve seen it sooner. But now that Trump’s back in office for a second term and there was a news story (that I learned about for the first time in PointlessHub’s video) saying that the chances of an asteroid impact ☄️ happening by the year 2032 have increased by 2%, I think that movie’s more relevant now than it was even back then in 2020. The article in question specifically said that the chances of the Earth 🌎 getting hit by a cataclysmic world ending asteroid ☄️ capable of wiping out the human race and all other life on Earth 🌎 by 2032 have doubled, presumably after some recent discoveries by astronomers or by NASA.
So, we may get hit by an asteroid ☄️ in 2032 or some time sooner, and depending on who’s in charge if and when it happens, our government may not even tell us until it is far too late. I don’t know why exactly I chose not to see this movie a lot sooner when it came out, I think may it was because I thought it was a religious movie or that it was some dumb low budget schlock, but whatever the reason, I got over it and I’ve decided to watch the movie, thanks to PointlessHub and his new video, which is good BTW, I think you should go watch it, I’ve already provided a link above which you can click on to go watch it. You’ll know which one it is the link when you hover your mouse over it and the word turns orange. I mean, I would rather watch Greenland 🇬🇱 than watch Don’t Look Up 👆, that stupid asteroid movie ☄️ by Adam McKay (the guy ♂︎ who directed the Anchorman movies, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, The Other Guys ♂︎, The Big Short, and Vice) and starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill that was a tone deaf allegory for climate change. That’s for damn sure.
As one comment on PointlessHub’s video pointed out, the movie is also kind of a twin film of Greenland 🇬🇱, since they’re both more cynical takes on the asteroid impact scenario ☄️ (or comet impact scenario since it’s a comet that’s hurdling towards Earth 🌎 in both movies), except Greenland 🇬🇱 is more of a dark and serious action disaster thriller movie whereas Don’t Look Up 👆 is more of a political satire disguised as a disaster movie, tries to be anyway. Whether or not it succeeds at being a political satire is up to the viewer. They also weren’t released the same year, they were released a year apart (Greenland 🇬🇱 came out in 2020 and Don’t Look Up 👆 came out in 2021), so they only partially count as twin films.
Most of the people that I’ve read online who have seen the movie said that it wasn’t very good, Adam McKay’s worst movie so far, at least the worst of his more political movies, comedy films that tackle more serious political issues and seek to educate the audience as well as entertain. He made this shift in his career from doing straight up comedies like the Anchorman movies, Talledega Nights, and The Other Guys ♂︎ to making more political semi-documentary comedy fair (docu-comedies if you will) with The Big Short, which was a movie about the 2008 financial crisis (which of course led to the Great Recession). Then he went onto make Vice, a movie about Dick Cheney, and then finally this movie, Don’t Look Up 👆, a movie about a comet smashing into the Earth 🌎.
Of his more political movies, Don’t Look Up 👆 is the one that is entirely fictional and hypothetical, not being based on any real events or real people like The Big Short and Vice were. Except, like I said, the impending comet impact is used as an allegory for climate change and also maybe the COVID-19 pandemic 🦠😷, since the pandemic 🦠😷 was still the hot button issue at the time when this movie was made. And with each political film Adam McKay made, he just got worse and worse.
The Big Short actually got good reviews when it came out, like it got genuine praise, and people cited it as a must-see for anyone who wants to understand the 2008 financial crisis a lot more. But it was just downhill from there. Vice got mixed reviews, with most of the negative reviews coming from the more historically literate amongst us. It was criticized for its historical inaccuracy, it’s rewriting of history and manipulation of certain events to construct a certain narrative, and it’s overall propaganda message to paint Cheney in as worse of a light possible and blame all of the worst excesses of the Bush administration solely on him.
The movie used him as a scapegoat for the bad things that Bush did as president, just as a lot of other people have. They just blame Cheney, “it’s all Cheney!” they said, “he was the real bad actor, he was the real evil guy 😈 who pushed us into a war we had no business starting.” When of course that’s a simplistic narrative that seeks to absolve responsibility for anyone else in the Bush administration and everyone in the general public for causing the war in Iraq 🇮🇶, when we all bear some responsibility for starting the war (at least those of us who cognizant back then).
I wasn’t cognizant back then, I was still a toddler back then, so it’s not on me, it’s on the rest of you 🫵, the rest of you who were born before 1997. The truth is that Cheney was just a cog in the machine, and it was ultimately Bush’s decision, he’s the one who wanted to go to war with Iraq 🇮🇶. My guess? Besides the terrorism thing, to settle an old score left over from his dad’s administration. Cheney, and the rest of people in the administration at the time, just made it happen. And the majority of the public cheered him on, like the majority of Americans 🇺🇸 supported the invasion of Iraq 🇮🇶 in 2003. They didn’t start turning against the war around the 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 time frame. If we expect the idea that Cheney is like Darth Vader (that’s the fictional character he was often compared to during his time as vice president), then Bush is definitely Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious.
People also took issue with the fact that Vice seemed to talk down to its audience and treat them like little kids or treat them as brain dead morons who are easily distracted by the shiny jingling keys 🔑 around them rather treat them as intelligent and mature adults like The Big Short did. They literally have a scene where a couple of characters are talking about the latest Fast & Furious movie while there’s a heated political debate going on next to them, and that scene is only there for the filmmakers to point and laugh, going “Haha, look how stupid Americans 🇺🇸 are 🫵! Not like me, Adam McKay, the serious filmmaker™ now, I’m really smart and morally righteous. I’m on the right side of history, unlike you dumb plebs. Why don’t you sit and watch me educate you and tell you how stupid are to your face. But don’t worry, I’ll go a little bit easy on you, since this whole movie is about how it was all Cheney’s fault and not yours. You don’t have to do anything to reevaluate what you believed, what you said, and how you acted during the War on Terror, it was all that scary bald guy ♂︎ with glasses 👓 who did it 👉.” It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it feels very elitist.
And while Don’t Look Up 👆 did get some good reviews and some award season buzz (I stopped taking the Golden Globes and the Oscars seriously after the whole Emilia Pérez debacle, not that I took them that seriously before that), it got way more negative reviews than either The Big Short or Vice. It was criticized for many of the same things Vice was criticized for, talking down to the audience, having a holier than thou attitude, and misrepresenting or distorting facts to fit a certain narrative or agenda (in this case, it would be scientific facts rather than historical and political facts like Vice).
But some of criticisms were unique to Don’t Look Up 👆 specifically, like it was criticized for its climate change allegory being tone deaf, and I’m sure for its depictions of certain ethnic and racial groups bordering on offensive. I mean, there’s a Native American in the movie, and that’s always a bit concerning because Hollywood still resorts to outdated stereotypes when it comes to portraying Native Americans, even in movies and TV shows that claim to be progressive. For this reason, some people have even dubbed Adam McKay “the left-wing Dinesh D’Souza,” and yeah, it fits. Greenland 🇬🇱 definitely sounds like the better movie compared to Don’t Look Up 👆.
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Disclaimer (5/6/22):
I apologize for any pro-Russian 🇷🇺 and anti-American 🇺🇸 opinion that I express in here. I wrote this when I was under the influence of Russian propaganda 🇷🇺, and before the invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 started. I had a very warped and twisted world view because I listened to so much Russian propaganda 🇷🇺 as well as Chinese propaganda 🇨🇳, which do overlap with each other. So, keep that in mind, when you read this. I no longer stand by any of the overly positive opinions I express about Russia 🇷🇺 and the USSR ☭, or any overly negative opinions I express about the US 🇺🇸 in here.
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The movie, Anna does this weird thing where they'll have this really shocking or surprising plot twist, or turn in the plot (like this movie has a lot of plot twists, so many that it would make M. Night Shyamalan blush), and then they'll just cut to days, months, or years earlier to show how and why those turn of events happened the way they did. So, as a result, this movie has a lot of flashback sequences, and does a lot of back and forth, where the plot moves forward, but then it pauses and takes several steps back. One example is the whole thing involving the KGB lady.
The old KGB lady (played by Helen Mirren) who mentors Anna in the film is presented as this kind of hardliner, this lady who is loyal to her country, who does things kind of by the book, but not really, who is extremely cold, ruthless, cutthroat, and is completely unaware that Anna is a double agent secretly working for the CIA on the side.
But then, at the end, they reveal that the KGB lady was actually working with Anna the whole time, and helping find a way to escape and leave the KGB for good to start a new and hopefully better life. They even reveal that she knew that Anna was working with the CIA the whole time, and that she knew about Anna's secret mission with the CIA to assassinate the head of the KGB, and was on board with it and didn't try to stop it because she wanted to lead the KGB.
He kind of said it in a funny, haha way, but that is pretty much what it does. It is main apparatus that the US 🇺🇸 uses to carry out its interests abroad besides the military. When the US 🇺🇸 can’t use the military or doesn’t want to, it will use the CIA, or it will use the CIA before it rolls out the military. They’ll even use the CIA in conjunction with the military, which they have done in many of the post-World War II conflicts that the US 🇺🇸 has been involved in, such as the Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷, the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦, the Cambodian Civil War 🇰🇭.
I mean, the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 was literally a CIA war, that the CIA waged themselves with very little involvement from the actual military, and the Laotian Hmong were their soldiers. There were also Laotian monarchist militias fighting for the CIA and the Kingdom of Laos, but it was mainly Hmong guerrillas that were doing most of the fighting against the Pathet Lao insurgency 🇱🇦, and they were all recruited and trained by the CIA specifically to fight the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦. They were also given refuge in the US 🇺🇸 after the war was lost, and the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦 took control.
Because of that, the majority of Hmong living in the US 🇺🇸 are descended from these war refugees, and the older generations, you know, the war refugees tend to be extremely anti-communist. Just like older Vietnamese-Americans 🇺🇸 who were soldiers in the South Vietnamese military and fled to the US 🇺🇸 as war refugees after the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳 won the war and took over the country.
But, just like the younger Vietnamese-Americans 🇺🇸, second or third generation who descendants of these South Vietnamese war refugees, the younger Hmong-Americans 🇺🇸 are not as stridently anti-communist, conservative, right-leaning as their parents or grandparents who came to America 🇺🇸 from this war. I mean, I’m sure there are some who are just conservative and right-wing as their parents and grandparents, not to completely generalize. But, a lot of them are a bit more progressive, liberal, or left-leaning than their parents and grandparents, even if they might still be a bit sympathetic to their parent’s or grandparent’s cause back in this war.
It’s kind of hard not to be when it’s your family, and Asians have strong familial connections with each other, they stay close to the family, and don’t really like to go against it too much. So do, Native Americans or American Indians, at least Pueblo Natives or Puebloans like me and my family, but that’s beside the point.
But, the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 was happening at the same time as the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, which the CIA was heavily involved along with the military, and it was happening covertly. That’s why the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 is often referred to as “the Secret War.” But, the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦, the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, and the Cambodian Civil War 🇰🇭 are all considered parts of one giant conflict that the US 🇺🇸 was waging in Southeast Asia, in Indochina, since a lot of the US 🇺🇸‘s bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳 and the Viet Cong spilled over into Laos. That’s the main reason why Laos 🇱🇦 became the most bombed country on Earth 🌏. There are still unexploded ordnance lying in the ground there to this day, and they still do often kill unsuspecting bystanders, including children 💥.
They’ve of course used the CIA in conjunction with the military in the post-9/11 conflict, the War on Terror. They’ve used the CIA in conjunction with the military in the Afghanistan War 🇦🇫, the Iraq War 🇮🇶, the Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾, and many other US military engagements 🇺🇸 in this still ongoing international campaign against Islamic terrorism ☪️. The CIA has interfered with other country’s elections 🗳, they’ve helped orchestrate coups, revolutions, and insurgencies against foreign governments that the US 🇺🇸 doesn’t like, they’ve kidnapped people, they’ve tortured people, and they’ve assassinated people.
This is definitely not an agency with a squeaky clean track record, and it is one that has lots of skeletons in its closest 💀. Even the movie, Anna goes out of its way to show how evil the CIA really is, and how they might even be more morally questionable or morally abhorrent than the KGB. The movie definitely does not try to portray the CIA as the good guys, or even the KGB as the good guys. The only hero or good guy in the movie is the protagonist, Anna herself, but even she isn’t completely innocent, and the movie makes allusions about that.
It could be argued that the CIA is an agency that the US 🇺🇸 would be so much better off without, especially since many fear that the CIA has become more powerful than the actual civilian government, and maybe accountable to no one. If an intelligence/spy agency like the CIA has unchecked power, and is accountable to no one, then that just leads to problems, and god forbid if anyone tried to curtail the power of the CIA in a meaningful way, then those problems might rear their ugly heads.)
I would also like to point out how kind of anachronistic Anna is. You know, the whole point of the movie is that it takes place during the Cold War. Anna is from the Soviet Union ☭ (she's from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ☭ to be exact), and she's a KGB agent. One of the first missions that we see Anna do in this movie is kill this Russian businessman 🇷🇺. The way they portray him is like he was one of those Russian oligarchs 🇷🇺 that we hear so much about in the West. But here's the thing: there were no Russian oligarchs 🇷🇺 during the Soviet era ☭.
That was something that came after the Soviet Union ☭’s collapse. The oligarchs were mostly people who used to run the state owned businesses and some of the ministries and departments within the Soviet Union ☭, and decided to grab and consolidate power and wealth for themselves once the Union ☭ dissolved. That's how they became some of the most powerful and richest people in the new Russia 🇷🇺.
Though, from what I understand, their power and influence over the Russian government 🇷🇺 and Russian economy 🇷🇺 is greatly exaggerated in the West. Western media and western governments often make it seem like the oligarchs have more power in Russia 🇷🇺 than the actual government does, and that can influence and straight tell the government what to do, and that's just not the case.
The government is still the supreme authority in Russia 🇷🇺, and the oligarchs, as rich and powerful as they may be, do not supersede it in any way. Not even the Orthodox Church ☦️ is as powerful as it once was during the imperial era. They're still pretty powerful and influential, but they're still not as powerful that they were in the Russian Empire 🇷🇺. The church ☦️ was just as powerful in the Russian Empire 🇷🇺 as the actual government itself. They were pretty much the secondary authority within the empire, and did often influence government policy; often influencing the Tsar directly.
But, in the modern day Russian Federation 🇷🇺, that's not the case. The government is still more powerful than the church ☦️, probably because Putin wants to avoid making the same mistakes as the Russian Empire 🇷🇺 and the Soviet Union ☭, mistakes that lead to those governments' downfall.
Speaking of Putin, from what I understand as well, the oligarchs are not as powerful as they were in the Yeltsin era because Putin has taken steps to curtail and limit their power and influence within Russia 🇷🇺, in an attempt to centralize and consolidate the government's authority in the country. This is why the US 🇺🇸's plan with 2014 sanctions on Russia 🇷🇺 to make the oligarchs convince Putin to back down on Ukraine 🇺🇦 and give up Crimea, in order to save the economy didn't work. It was based around a false premise, a misconception or misunderstanding of the inner workings of Russia 🇷🇺, and the role of the oligarchs within Russian politics and economics 🇷🇺. But anyway, back to Anna.
So, if that was the idea they were going with this Russian businessman 🇷🇺 who Anna has to assassinate, then it's completely anachronistic. It also doesn't help that they refer to Saint Petersburg as Saint Petersburg. The Russian businessman 🇷🇺 is supposed to be from Saint Petersburg or he says he wants to take Anna to Saint Petersburg, if I’m remembering it currently. But, I know for sure they refer to the city as Saint Petersburg. She basically pretends to be a model working in Paris, and she starts dating the Russian businessman 🇷🇺 to get close to him before assassinating him one day when he least expected it.
The problem is that the city wasn't called Saint Petersburg during the time when this movie's supposed to take place. It was still called Leningrad during this time, and the city's name didn't get changed back to Saint Petersburg until after the Soviet Union ☭’s collapse, and the formation of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺. You might say, "Well, what if this movie takes place in a world where the Soviet Union ☭ didn't collapse? Maybe, they would've still changed the city's name back to Saint Petersburg." That is very doubtful.
According to the various time stamps throughout the movie, this movie takes place in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, just before the Soviet Union ☭ dissolved. It is not at all implied that this is an alternate world where the Soviet Union ☭ survives. The way the Soviet Union ☭ is portrayed throughout this is that it's kind of a dying empire, and that it's on the last legs, especially with all the internal conflict and internal divisions within the government and government agencies and departments such as the KGB. I mean, there's literally a subplot involving Anna colluding with the CIA to assassinate the head of the KGB, and replacing him with someone more "moderate" because he killed some of their people, and they wanted revenge.
Then, after that KGB guy is killed by Anna, her mentor, the KGB lady played by Helen Mirren, takes his place and becomes the new head of the KGB. If that's not serious internal division, and the sign of a declining government, I don't know what is. Of course, by including this subplot, by framing it in this way, the movie makes it kind of seem like the US 🇺🇸 played a direct hand in causing the collapse of the USSR ☭.
So, whether intentionally or not, the movie's kind of playing into US propaganda 🇺🇸 that they're the ones who brought down the Soviet Union ☭, and they're the ones who won the Cold War. It's overly simplistic and propagandistic to say that the United States 🇺🇸 won the Cold War. There was no winner, the Soviet Union ☭ just collapsed and the Cold War pretty much ended by default. I mean, how can there be a cold war if one of the belligerents just stops existing? That is not a victory, it is a cancellation.
I mean, the collapse of the USSR ☭ came as a complete shock and surprise to the US 🇺🇸. Before that faithful December day, the Americans 🇺🇸 were still acting as if the Soviets ☭ were still a big threat, and were still going to be around for a while. They weren't acting as a victor who was about to strike the final blow to their opponents, nor were they winding things down as if their opponent was about to die and the conflict was about to end, no it wasn't like that at all. So, Anna, knowingly or unknowingly, plays into a dangerous and simplistic myth that the United States 🇺🇸 won the Cold War, and that the Soviet Union ☭ fell because actions taken by the United States 🇺🇸.
The reality is that the Soviet Union ☭ fell largely due to its own internal problems, and the Cold War just ended by default since one of the belligerents just dropped out and stopped existing. The United States 🇺🇸 just took all the credit for winning the Cold War single-handedly; even though it really didn't do anything to win or end the Cold War. It acted like a racer who was in race 🏁 with someone, and their opponent or competitor just keeled over and died in the middle of the race from a heart attack 🫀 or some other health problem.
And then that first racer just claimed victory in the race 🏁 even though they didn’t actually reach the finish line and their opponent just up and died 💀. In all honesty, if it were up to the United States 🇺🇸, the Cold War would still be going on to this day, but it just didn’t work out that way. That’s why they’re trying to start a new cold war with Russia 🇷🇺 and/or China 🇨🇳. But, anyway, back to the issue over Saint Petersburg.
Even if it were true that Anna took place in an alternate reality where the Soviet Union ☭ didn't collapse, it's doubtful that they would've changed the city's name back to Saint Petersburg. It would've still been called Leningrad because the Soviet Union ☭ was extremely proud of their past leaders, especially Vladimir Lenin. He was the founder of the Soviet Union ☭, and was its first leader after all, so they've kept the city's name as Leningrad to honor him. I mean, even the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 hasn't completely abandoned the Soviet past ☭, or forsaken Lenin, since the oblast that Saint Petersburg is located in is still called Leningrad to this very day. So, having the city be called Saint Petersburg pre-Soviet collapse ☭ is pretty anachronistic.
Also, I may be mistaken, but I believe there is a scene where you see Russian flags like this 🇷🇺 being waved outside on flag poles of various businesses in Moscow or wherever the scene where Anna is on her first ever mission with the KGB takes place. It’s the scene where she goes into that restaurant and she has to kill some guy and take his phone 📞, but she kind of fucks it up and ends up having to fight all the guy's henchmen; destroying the entire restaurant in the process.
It's like a test for her to see if she can actually handle being a KGB agent working on field assignments, and the old KGB lady gives a time limit of 10 minutes or something like that to complete the mission. But, as I said, the mission goes wrong, and Anna misses her time limit. Not that it even matters because the time limit thing was just a bluff by the old KGB lady, and Anna gets accepted into the KGB anyway.
If it is true, that they were waving Russian flags 🇷🇺 and not Soviet flags, then that is also pretty anachronistic, they should be waving Soviet flags ☭. I mean, at least have them wave Russian SFSR flags ☭. They got that detail right in all the scenes in government buildings and stuff, why not on the actual streets of Moscow? People in the Soviet Union ☭ (specifically the Russian SFSR ☭) didn't really start waving Russian flags 🇷🇺 until the failed 1991 August Coup happened, dissatisfaction with the Soviet government ☭ and the Soviet system ☭, and Russian nationalism 🇷🇺 reached a fever pitch. This movie takes place before any of those events happened, so Russians shouldn't be waving Russian flags 🇷🇺 like that all willy-nilly like that by this time. They should still be mostly waving Soviet flags ☭ or Russian SFSR flags ☭.
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On top of that, most people just called the Soviet Union ☭, Russia or Soviet Russia ☭ anyway, so it is clear that the USSR ☭ was just seen as Russia and the Soviet government ☭ was just seen as a Russian government, especially by Americans 🇺🇸. During the Cold War, most Americans 🇺🇸 referred to the USSR ☭ as Russia and the Soviets ☭ as Russians. They didn’t really distinguish the 15 republics from each other, it was just all Russia to them, and in some ways, it kind of was.
But, it is still pretty simplistic to say that the USSR ☭ was Russia. Russia was a big part of the USSR ☭, it was the main administrative arm of it, and Russian was the official language. But, it was still just one part of a larger whole. The USSR ☭ was just as much Russian as it was Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz.
That’s why it is better to just call the country the Soviet Union ☭ or the USSR ☭, and to the people as Soviets ☭, rather than just referring to the country as Russia or Soviet Russia ☭, and to the people as Russians. It’s more broader and inclusive, it doesn’t exclude or ignore the other 14 republics, and it doesn’t give the false impression that the USSR ☭ was just Russian. I do it to distinguish the USSR ☭ from the Russian Federation 🇷🇺, so that I don’t confuse anyone about which country that I’m talking about at any given moment.
I will say though, that if USSR ☭ wanted to cement itself as an Eurasian country rather than just Russia under a new government, then it could’ve made the other languages in the USSR ☭ official languages. Just look at post-Apartheid South Africa 🇿🇦, that country has 11 official languages, some of the most official languages for any one country. Imagine if the USSR ☭ had elevated the other 14 languages in the other 14 Soviet republics ☭ to official language status. The USSR ☭ would’ve had 15 official languages, probably the most in the world.
I mean, at least make Ukrainian the second official language since at least two of the Soviet leaders ☭ after Joseph Stalin were Ukrainian: Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Speaking of Joseph Stalin, Stalin wasn’t even Russian, he was Georgian. So, why not make Georgian an official language too? I mean, he was the second most important leader in the USSR ☭’s history, besides Vladimir Lenin, I would say that his native tongue deserved official language status. Anyway, as for the flag itself is pretty simple, it just looks like the national Soviet flag ☭, but with a blue stripe on the left side.)
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Note:
There’s something else I forgot to mention. During one of the flashback scenes where we see Anna’s past before she joined the KGB, there’s an American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ trying to take money 💵 out of an ATM. Anna has this shithead of a boyfriend (a complete abusive piece of shit), and he takes her along on one his muggings along with his criminal friends. They drive up to this bank that I assume is in Moscow, and there’s an American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ there trying to take money 💵 out of the ATM.
If I remember it correctly, they get out of the car, and try to mug the guy and get him to withdraw money 💵 for them from the ATM. Or, the American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ in question is a kidnapping victim of Anna’s boyfriend and his criminal shithead friends, and he was stuffed in the trunk of the car that that Anna’s boyfriend picks her up in. Then, when they get to the bank, they take the guy out of the trunk, and try to get him to withdraw money 💵 for them from his account from this ATM. That is pretty anachronistic right there.
I mean, what’s an American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ doing in the Soviet Union ☭, in the Russian SFSR ☭? From my understanding, the Soviet Union was kind of closed off to tourism or expatriation, and the only foreigners that came to the USSR ☭ were politicians, diplomats, or political activists. Like, if you really only went to the USSR ☭ it had a political reason to do so. Bernie Sanders went to the USSR ☭, and met with Soviet leaders ☭ or Soviet politicians ☭ (I’m not sure), and he made his controversial statements about the bread lines 🍞; statements that I’m sure have been taken out of context by conservatives and other right-wingers in the US 🇺🇸 trying to discredit Bernie in the two presidential elections 🗳 he was involved in, the 2016 and 2020 elections 🗳.
I maybe completely wrong about that, but as far I am aware, tourism and expatriation to the USSR ☭ was very limited. The Cold War channel did a video about the subject of tourism in the Soviet Union ☭, and according to them, it wasn’t really like tourism in the US 🇺🇸, the UK 🇬🇧, France 🇫🇷, West Germany 🇩🇪, Italy 🇮🇹, Japan 🇯🇵, or even China 🇨🇳. It was a more comparable to tourism in North Korea 🇰🇵, then it was like tourism in China 🇨🇳, especially present-day China 🇨🇳.
It definitely wasn’t like tourism in the current Russian Federation 🇷🇺, I know that for sure. I mean, it kind of changed in the 1980s, during the Gorbachev era, when the country was liberalizing and starting to open up, so maybe that explains it but I don’t know. I don’t know enough about Soviet tourism ☭ to really say.
So, that part’s already questionable, having this random American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ in Moscow during the Soviet era ☭, even during the liberal Gorbachev times. But, the part that’s really questionable is the whole ATM thing. Were there even ATMs in Russia during the Soviet era ☭? I’m sure there were, but I’m sure that they only did cash withdrawals in rubles since that was the currency exclusive to the USSR ☭, and the currency currently exclusive to Russia 🇷🇺; Russia 🇷🇺 does business in dollars 💵 and euros 💶 as well, but you get the point.
I highly doubt that they ever dispensed any US dollars 💵, and that’s the money that the Anna’s boyfriend and his criminal buddies were talking about. They were asking the American guy 🇺🇸♂︎ to withdrawal US dollars 💵 for them because that’s what the guy had, he was an American 🇺🇸 and had an account in the USSR ☭.
That is probably the most inaccurate thing in this whole movie. Yes, the USSR ☭ had banks, yes the USSR ☭ had ATMs, and yes the USSR had American tourists 🇺🇸, especially in the 1980s, but they did not withdraw USD 💵 in their banks or ATMs, and they did not allow Americans 🇺🇸 or any other foreigners to have bank accounts in their country. I mean, the only way that I can of that’s even possible is that it was an American multinational bank 🇺🇸, and that they let you withdraw from anywhere in the world, as long as it’s their bank.
But, that’s like something that came after the USSR ☭, in the Russian Federation 🇷🇺, where foreign banks were allowed to operate in Moscow and other Russian cities 🇷🇺. I highly doubt that Bank of America 🇺🇸 or whatever was operating in Moscow during the Soviet era ☭. So, none of this makes any sense, and I don’t even know why it’s in the movie.
It didn’t have to be a bank robbery or a mugging that got Anna in the middle of a car chase with the police with her boyfriend, and lead her to meeting the KGB guy played by Luke Evans who helps her get recruited. It could’ve been any violent crime, and yet, Luc Besson chose that. It’s like this movie forgets that it’s supposed to take place in the Soviet Union ☭ and not the Russian Federation 🇷🇺, like I swear to God. It’s definitely not the most historically accurate thing in the world, and it isn’t even that great of a spy movie on its own. I mean, it’s not bad, like it’s not terrible, it’s just okay.
There are some good aspects to it, like I like the action scenes, the fight scenes, and I like the music, like I like those songs they used in the movie: “I Am Criminal” by Éric Serra and featuring Mitivaï Serr, and “My Beauty” by Beauty Freak and featuring Malee. But, I just couldn’t get into the story, or the characters that much, it was just all very bleh and annoying.
The only thing that really makes this movie kind of interesting is that it takes place during the Cold War, in the Soviet Union ☭, and the main protagonist is a Soviet spy ☭. But, as I said, the movie gets a lot of the details and info about the Soviet Union ☭ wrong, with all the anachronisms and inaccuracies that are throughout this movie.
So, this movie doesn’t really offer much, at least to me it doesn’t. This movie was just Luc Besson trying to do another one of his femme fatale movies, like La Femme Nikita, and not really succeeding. This movie is like the Russian version of La Femme Nikita 🇷🇺, and it’s an inferior product. I’ve never seen La Femme Nikita, I want to, but I’m sure it’s way better than this movie.
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