Red Sparrow is a good movie. That’s it. It’s acted well. Decent direction. Engaging story. It’s good. All the way through. Yes, it could and maybe should have been better, but I appreciate a lot of what the filmmakers were aiming for, even if they sort of held back on a number of potential plot points that certainly feel like studio decisions to keep it lingering in a general audiences safety zone.
The story centers on talented Russian ballerina Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) who suffers a horrific on-stage avert-your-eyes accident that instantly ends her dancing career. That’s tragic enough, but she depends on the government’s high financial support to house and take care of her and her ill mother (Joely Richardson). Feeling pressure, Dominika is visited by her Uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), a director of the foreign intelligence office. He tasks her with seducing a powerful Russian mobster in exchange for continued support, but is being manipulated, for when the encounter turns dark, she is raped and then witness to a brutal execution, then forced into joining service as a “Sparrow” operative or be killed herself. That’s a long way from tutus and pirouettes.
Naturally, the deeply focused training of the ballet is a perfect complement for the needs of a special agent trained for seduction, intelligence gathering, and assassination. And I mean that in a constructive way. The film travels us through a bit of that cruel education, under the tutelage of a Sparrow training program leader known only as Matron (Charlotte Rampling), where Dominika learns to shed her dignity and use her allure in service of the mission. That becomes her objective in an assignment involving American CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who the government thinks can expose a Russian mole.
The story itself isn’t all that complicated and mostly revolves on the mistreatment of Dominika and her relationship with Nash, both of which we are meant to guess her level of loyalty for. Will she betray her government? Is she truly falling for Nash or is it a ruse to actually uncover the mole? This is all played out rather simply, though many scenes are expertly strung together with some genuine tension and moments of sudden jarring violence.
This is where Red Sparrow loses some of its grip however, the violence authentic sure, but built on an expectation of pain that it tends to reign back on, giving just enough to kindle the squirms in you before checking out. There is one torture scene involving a skin grafter that is hard to watch but still manages to be somewhat toned down while being effective. It’s horrific to think about but the movie doesn’t go all the way. And if a movie doesn’t go all the way, should it go at all? That’s a tough call, and while I don’t want to see a person shredded on screen, there is a weird lack of trauma to what happens in Red Sparrow.
Same with the much discussed nudity, which is hardly a thing here, Lawrence on a months long promotional tour during the film’s release that seemed to center entirely on her choice to go buck naked. Yippee. Celebrity boobs. Frankly, the story could have survived just as well without the brief glimpses of such, but perhaps would have had more impact if it were made more serviceable to the story where it works both sexually and dehumanizing, which admittedly, the film does try for. However, it never quite does this part right, feeling more like a gimmick. I hate when a movie becomes about a “daring” choice an actor makes rather than how that choice in the film resonates.
Either way, while I did enjoy Jennifer Lawrence a lot in this, she’s easily one of the best of her generation, her performance here rigid and stoic, personal and emotional, there wasn’t much connection to Egerton, who is a fine actor but leaves us with no sense of attachment to his character’s plight or the relationship between them. I can’t put my finger on it, but you never get at all soaked up in the romance or truly harrowing sense of dread that should be weighting everything about these two people.
With that in mind, there are several very good moments in all this, but I will concentrate on one in particular that actually puts Dominika and Nate in the peripheral for a short time while Dominika must prove herself to her superiors, they suggesting she is lacking in her efforts to get anything out of Nash. She does this by stealing hidden information from her fellow Sparrow roommate, saying she is actually working with her. This plan goes terribly, murderously wrong of course, ending in a gruesome reminder of what will happen if Dominika fails in her ploy.
The target is Stephanie Boucher (Mary-Louise Parker), the chief of staff to a U.S. Senator. She is looking to sell classified information and it is Dominika who becomes the point man per se in making that deal. She is pressured again by a vile station chief named Maxim Volontov (Douglas Hodge), who is just one more reason why she meets with Nate and agrees to be a double agent and stop the sale of information and instead swap it with useless disks. She does this by seducing Nash, which again raises our suspicion as to what Dominika’s larger plan is. The movie does this angle well.
At the hotel in London where the meeting is set, she has arranged to have the disks given by Boucher to be verified on a computer Dominika has set upon a desk with a trick plate in front that kicks open for a secret storage space. It’s here where she has the false disks and where she needs time to make the swap. While Boucher and Volontov wait in the next room, things don’t go as well as planned and it takes action from Nate’s side to suppress Volontov’s growing concern.
I like this whole sequence, the only time film really embraces the “secret agent” aspect of Dominika’s role in all this, the moment played out like a Mission: Impossible sham. You have expect Dominika to pull a face mask off and reveal Tom Cruise. There’s a closing claustrophobic pressure on Dominika that is punctuated by the eyes of two international teams of covert government operations watching. You really aren’t sure where it’s going to go, and while it has a kind of manipulated quirk in the middle of it with a stubborn false panel that doesn’t work at first, the execution is pretty tight all the way through.
That’s made all the better because of Parker, who straight out elevates the whole dang film, even while she’s in it for only a few minutes. She is able to harbor a deep set of emotional turmoil into what Boucher is doing, desperately trying to play it coy while outright betraying a country she has sworn to protect. I love what she does in this small moment, and then where it leads when we are past the work of Dominika and on the streets outside the hotel into a trap that sees this woman face a much heavier truth. This is the stuff the film should have been more about. It’s absolutely gold.
No matter. Red Sparrow is still a worthy watch, the movie a pretty good showcase for Lawrence. She manages to make this troubled ballerina feel real and I enjoyed many unexpected turns she is forced to make. The story is though, perhaps a bit frustratingly so, all too generic, probably unfairly compared to a slew of more stylish female-oriented action spy movies released at the time that are decidedly more fun. However, I’ll say again that I appreciate the darkness in director Francis Lawrence‘s effort, the slow steady camera work and muted colors and the reach for something a bit more subdued and menacing. Recommended.