Review: Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow - Francis Lawrence

       The trailers for Red Sparrow were all sleek and sexy, with Jennifer Lawrence's sparkly red dress, her femme fatale Russian accent, and her Charlize-Theron-bleach-blonde-hair a la last year's Atomic Blonde. It was sold as a more psycho-sexual spy thriller, where J-Law uses not only her smarts and strength but also her....sessuality. And while I don't take issues to a movie not quite adhering to its marketing campaign, I do take issue when all the things about the movie that made it look trashy and fun were actually hard to watch and at times basically upsetting. Atomic Blonde had fun, but Red Sparrow seems almost intent to make sure the audience is, while sure, probably engaged, because it is a well-made movie with decent tension and good performances, squirming uncomfortably and wishing to hell an old Russian scientist would give J-Law a necklace that actually shot poison darts or something. This movie's pretty rough.
       Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika Ergova (who has a Russian accent but doesn't speak Russian once the entire movie and I know, at thirty years old, and an avid movie watcher, this sort of thing shouldn't bother me, BUT IT DOES. IT ALWAYS BOTHERS ME) a famous ballerina who, because of a terrible injury, is forced into the world of Russian espionage. Yep, pretty much just like that. Her uncle is big into the Russian secret service, and she very quickly gets embroiled in a web of lies, murder, treason, secrets, and Joel Edgerton's sexy abs. Is she playing the Americans? Is she playing the Russians? Will we find out who the mole is?! (Because of course there's a mole. It IS a spy movie).

       There are some things about the movie that work: Jennifer Lawrence is solid and believable (as always). The direction by Francis Lawrence curates a good level of dread and suspense throughout, and the movie definitely has a visceral charm to it that makes it, while not fun, engaging. The first scene of the movie, in fact, was pretty tight, combining a ballet sequence with a thrilling spy chase scene. But after that, the movie's excitement begins to fizzle away. At its core narratively, the movie is kind of a mess. And the main reason for that is none other than Dominika herself.

       This isn't Jennifer Lawrence's fault as a performer. She does an apt job making us care for her. The biggest problem with the movie is that Dominika is a very passive character. A lot of things happen to her, and she's forced to react to them, but throughout the egregiously long run-time of the movie, she is able to make very few actual decisions. I understand that she is continuously put in these situations where the character doesn't have much of a choice, but that simply doesn't make for a very entertaining movie. I'ts her lack of agency that honestly makes large parts of the movie much less interesting. She does this because her uncle says she has to. Then she does that because her evil spy school teacher told her. There are small moments where she tries to reclaim some of herself for herself, but the oppressive world she lives in is so dominating and cruel that for her the biggest choice she gets to make is fucking someone she doesn't want to missionary position instead of doggy. Yes, it was a cool moment for the character, but she really doesn't get to do a lot.

       Yes, by the end of the movie there is, of course, a big reveal (Spoiler Alert: It's not a big reveal. My spoiler alert is that there isn't much of a spoiler alert. Did I just blow your mind? I did. I'm a dirty little mind blower), it's too little too late. I'm glad that things, ya know, work out for her, but it feels like she didn't have a lot to do with any of it until the very end. And even by the end, she's still trapped in a particular cycle that the movie makes very clear she doesn't want or deserve, but because she has so little say in any of it, it's meant to be cathartic, but isn't.

      The movie has very, very little action in it. A good thriller doesn't need car chases and non-stop hand-to-hand combat, but some kind of excitement would have very much helped break up the brutal assault of torture and terribleness the movie settles into from the very beginning. The first job she agrees to, which is supposed to be a simple phone swap case, turns into a scene where the man raping her is murdered while he's still inside her. She almost gets raped again at her training school, which is like a horrifying, sexually manipulative Hogwarts. And then there are no fewer than three more LITERAL torture scenes. Yes, Russians love to torture people (apparently), but the movie is honestly not good enough to take on such brutal and thematically dark material.
       Yes, Jennifer Lawrence plays a strong female lead, and yes, the movie has some pretty good mood going for it, but overall the feeling is one of a flick that just slogs about, not all that excitingly. Definitely not excitingly enough to justify how unpleasant most of the film is during its (did I mention far too long?) run time? Somewhere in the murky, depressing murk of this movie lies something more fun and engaging, but neither the screenplay or the director had the wherewithal to quite find it.

Grade: Much, much better than the nude photos J-Law were leaked online. Oh, but as a movie? Eh. 5?