Review:
"Red Sparrow"
![]() Release Date: March 2, 2018
Rating: R Running Time: 141 minutes By accident or by design, the contemporary spy thriller Red Sparrow reignites the Cold War-era animosity between two old enemies without once directly addressing the current concerns and suspicions the United States harbors toward Russia as a result of the latter’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Instead, Red Sparrow—which reunites Jennifer Lawrence with her Hunger Games franchise director Francis Lawrence—dedicates itself to bringing Fifty Shades of Grey-levels of kinkiness to its spy games between Lawrence’s Russian rookie agent and Joel Edgerton’s CIA officer. Sporting a believable but colorless Russian accent, Lawrence transforms from injured ballerina to state-trained honey pot without batting an eye despite the physical and psychological abuse she endures. The kicker? She’s assigned by her uncle, a high-level intelligence officer (a suitably slimy Matthias Schoenaerts), to seduce Edgerton and pump him for information on a Russian double agent. Lawrence cloaks herself in steel for a dehumanizing role that requires her to employ sex as a lethal weapon. After her Dominika survives being raped at the hands of a Russian oligarch, Lawrence embraces the increasingly demanding challenges she is presented with in Justin Haythe’s screenplay without hesitation. It’s not that Lawrence strips Dominika of all emotions in the same way her handlers degradingly strip her of her individuality and turn her into a blunt tool; she employs and effectively manages the inherent anger that rages insides Dominika and only channels it as necessary. Lawrence appears desensitized to the sexual acts that she is asked to perform in Red Sparrow—some of duty for Dominika, others to exert her power over her allies and adversary. Director Francis Lawrence takes a matter-of-fact approach to the sexuality that informs Red Sparrow, to the point that the film never borders on erotic. Even a sex scene between Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton seems more functional than essential to the relationship that Red Sparrow efficiently establishes between the two purported rivals. It also doesn’t help that sparks fail to fly between Lawrence and Edgerton, who is too reserved for his own good. There are two mysteries that unfold during Red Sparrow: while the narrative is driven by Lawrence’s efforts to unmask the mole, the film’s primarily focus is on where Lawrence’s loyalties’ lie. Is everything she does in Red Sparrow to save herself and her sick mother (Joey Richardson)? Unfortunately, Red Sparrow inadvertently tips its hand very early as to the identity of Lawrence’s quarry. Also, as the plot progresses and the nature of the Lawrence’s relationship become clearly, it becomes glaringly obvious how Red Sparrow plans to tie up loose ends with a neat little bow. Red Sparrow also makes the mistake of positioning Lawrence’s Dominika not as a novice who is grossly underestimated by everyone around her but as the smartest character in a shadowy world populated by experienced masters of manipulation, both friend and foe. Despite turning Dominika into a spy who could give James Bond a run for his money, director Francis Lawrence still finds ways to squeeze as much tension and intrigue out of Red Sparrow as possible. He also goes all in on the graphic violence that informs Dominika’s mission, sometimes intermingling the brutality on display with the sexual acts that involve her. Improbably, though, nothing proves to be as shocking and as unexpected as the trauma Dominika experiences in the first five minutes of Red Sparrow. This defining moment sets the tone for the rest of Red Sparrow, but it is also the only time when the film shows any true empathy for an innocent forced to abandon the beauty of dance in favor of the art of killing. Robert Sims Aired: March 1, 2018 Web site: https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/red-sparrow |
|