The Box Office:

Red Sparrow is our latest entry in 2018’s most interesting game of “Do movie stars matter?” This time out, it’s Jennifer Lawrence as a Russian spy in a long, R-rated sex thriller/action drama that has little to offer to general audiences beyond the notion of Lawrence essentially acting out a Black Widow origin story. For the record, we’ve all made that comparison, but it’s not a criticism.

It’s a primal concept and if this movie is good it shouldn’t matter if it’s loosely like a different fictional character. After all, it’s not what the movie is about but how it’s about it. And sans a beloved IP, this one (based on Jason Matthews’ novel) is depending entirely on its top-billed star to make the sale.

Post-release online controversies notwithstanding, Lawrence and Chris Pratt powered Passengers to $300 million worldwide in late 2016, and Lawrence anchored Joy to $101m worldwide almost entirely by herself. mother! was never going to be a huge hit, but that’s the kind of artistically challenging “one for me” that you want to see from our would-be movie stars. Of course, this movie is much more of a grim European spy drama than a “Lawrence does 007” action spectacular.


The Review:

Red Sparrow is a grim piece of work. It is less an action thriller than a borderline erotic horror show, a cold-blooded and often vicious espionage drama that sustains itself through twists, turns and periodic bouts of uncommon onscreen cruelty. It’s absolutely a movie for adults, featuring the kind of frank sexual content and graphic violence that is barely possible in our PG-13, four-quadrant global blockbuster era. It’s an adult movie for grownups from a time when there was a readily available audience for such a thing. It’s also both way too long and mostly engrossing from start-to-finish.

I’ve talked a lot about 20th Century Fox setting themselves apart by releasing big or big-ish movies for adults. Well, this deeply cynical Jennifer Lawrence vehicle certainly qualifies. It’s not necessarily a “fun” flick, and no one is going to mistake it for a so-called female empowerment movie. But there is a real sense of danger and menace to the proceedings, and a real effort to craft a big-scale espionage drama sans any demands for franchise affinity or long-term brand. Warts and all, it’s just focused on being a good movie and a movie star showcase.

Lawrence’s descent into her own personal hell begins as her promising ballet career is cut short via a gruesome injury. With no way to support herself or her ill mother, Dominika Egorova is quickly recruited by her uncle, a powerful man (played with understated menace by Matthias Schoenaerts) who helps run the SVR, to partake in what is intended to be a one-time assignment. But things go very, very badly, and the former dancer is given the choice of a quiet death or enrollment in the “Sparrow School,” which trains young Russians in spy-craft with an emphasis on seduction.

Dominika may not make the best impression on her teacher (a delicious Charlotte Rampling), but her disobedience and lack of tact impress a few people on the food chain. So off she goes to Moscow to suss out a mole via an apparent seduction of a demoted CIA agent (Joel Edgerton). The movie then becomes a puzzle box, where the audience is kept on its toes in terms of whose side Dominika is on and if the CIA dude is getting to her. Jokes about Lawrence having to learn how to seduce dudes notwithstanding, the plot works.

Red Sparrow avoids certain tropes of this genre, as (for example) the relationship between the Russian spy and the CIA operative is not some great love story but merely two attractive people who eventually get sexually involved with each other. Sure, the film flirts with the whole “young Russian girl used as an unwilling pawn of the state is rescued by a do-gooder American spy” thing, but the movie doesn’t play that track at full volume. The picture remains relatively clinical about their alleged relationship, and that lack of condescension keeps us on our toes.

Director Francis Lawrence crafts an unapologetically “big” movie, offering lush production values, multiple locations, a sense of scale and a grown-up sensibility that was once taken for granted in mid-level studio pictures. Of course, the film’s “epic-ness” extends to its 140-minute running time, which is way too long for the story being told. And the film’s third act is padded out by more false endings than Return of the King and Point Break combined, even if the in-the-moment sequence mostly keep our attention. Red Sparrow is perhaps a bit too much of a good thing.

A tighter film may not have had the time for Mary Louise Parker’s delightful glorified cameo as a crooked (and heavily intoxicated) Congressional aide. I would have happily seen an entire film told from her point-of-view. It’s a great character turn from a veteran actress who has been underused since Weeds left the air. The rest of the cast (including Jeremy Irons) all relish the opportunity to dig into this kind of material outside of pay cable. The whole package is anchored by an uncommonly amoral movie star turn by one of the most famous actresses in the world.

Red Sparrow is a big, sprawling and unapologetically nasty spy drama, one more rooted in character, sex and violence than action beats. Lawrence is superb as a young woman both trying to take control of her own destiny and trying to determine what that would look like. I was continuously impressed by how unforgiving the film was toward all of its heroes and villains (this makes Salt look like Agent Cody Banks), as the movie’s brutality and frank sexuality, from a major studio and featuring a major female movie star, seems borderline courageous in our think piece era.

It’s too long, but it’s mostly pretty good and always watchable. Red Sparrow isn’t your friend and bless it for that.