Post Oscars, there usually isn’t much to watch. Now comes Red Sparrow, the latest collaboration of Hunger Games’ director Francis Lawrence and mega-star Jennifer Lawrence.
Red Sparrow (Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Mathias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons) – Why, if you have the #1 female star in the world, do you wait to release her latest tour de force until March? Could it be that the film wasn’t viewed as Oscar worthy?
The answer says a lot about Red Sparrow, the slick spy flick starring Jennifer Lawrence as the Russian ballerina-turned-spy. Lawrence plays Dominica Egorova as icy cold as she adopts a new career after an on-stage accident permanently renders her unable to dance anymore. As a star of the ballet, she is a celebrated ward of the government, which quickly terminates her free housing when she is no longer useful to them. Tending to her crippled mother, Lawrence is a determined realist who finds herself without portfolio. Her uncle, an associate director of the Russian Secret Service, recruits her into the service, knowing that she has few options and believing that her steeliness will make for a perfect “sparrow.”
The sparrows are trained as killers and sexual toys, manipulating their prey to gain information and secrets. Taught through intense, no-holds-barred methods, these Russian operatives stalk and pounce, learning to control their emotions and sacrifice all dignity, shame, and feeling for the good of the Mother Russia.
But Dominika is different. Her drive comes from her love for her mother, her commitment to overcome her fate, and her desire to survive. She is a savant, able to morph into her characters but not with evil purpose. She wants to find a way out but it won’t be easy.
Meanwhile, the Americans are doing spying of their own, and Dominika is in their sights. A discredited American agent, Nate Nash, who sacrificed his own career to save a Russian contact, is sent back in to try to turn Dominika and protect the identity of the mole inside the inner reaches of the Russian government.
That’s the set up. The rest is taut, tight spy stuff with a few doses of torture, nudity, and gore, a tempting trio that keeps the 160 minutes deliciously juicy.
Lawrence re-teams with her Hunger Games’ director, Francis Lawrence (no relation), to create a first-rate yarn with plenty of twists and turns. Adopting a Russian accent, Lawrence is credible as both the ballerina and the spy, hiding behind bangs and never winking at the camera. I found myself trying to find slippage in her Russian accent but never finding any fault.
She is a once-in-a-generation talent who can play tough and smart, wisecracking and deadly serious. She can be glamorous or gritty, cunning or calculating. At 27, she almost has the range of Streep with all the sexiness of Bacall … and that is saying something. Her career arrow points only one way: up!
Red Sparrow is not for everyone. The torture scenes are merciless; the sex training is uncomfortable. This movie is edge-of-your-seat engrossing, which will be appealing to some and too tense for others.
A top-flight supporting cast, led by the Matthias Schoenaerts as the maniacal uncle and Charlotte Rampling as the matron of the Sparrow School, make Red Sparrow perhaps the only must-see film of the post-Oscar season.