Review: Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow, based on the novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews, introduces us to Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet who finds her career curtailed after her partner accidentally lands on her leg. With her apartment and ailing mother's (Joely Richardson) medical care no longer funded by the state, Dominika soon finds herself a reluctant performer on an altogether different stage.

Red Sparrow unexpectedly surprises for a few reasons. For one, it's more Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy than its toned-down Atomic Blonde-style trailer would suggest. For another, this role not only finds Lawrence at her most sexual and seductive but a) reminds viewers that she is more than just Katniss or Mystique, and b) following the unsettling romantic drama Passengers and vehemently divisive mother!, is further proof that she is not one to shy away from provocative and ambitious material. For yet another, it makes one wonder how female sexuality is portrayed in this genre. Most don't have an issue with Bond bedding every woman in sight, yet a woman deploying her "feminine wiles" carries a negative connotation. Moreover, whether by intent or happenstance, the reading of Red Sparrow becomes even more layered in the light of the #metoo era. For this is a film about power, specifically how women are in debt to the men who have it, and how those men commoditise and exploit those women so that they are nothing more than body parts. Or, as Dominika herself puts it, "If you don't matter to the men in power, then you don't matter."

Indeed, much of the film devotes itself to how men break down Dominika and her efforts to maintain and reclaim herself. There's her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts, slick and sinister), a member of the state security service. He promises to take care of her and her mother if she seduces information out of a Russian politician. It's not exactly a choice, but she goes along with it, only to end up being raped and a witness to the politician's murder. As Russian intelligence isn't exactly keen on witnesses surviving, she once again finds herself backed in a corner: train to become a sparrow or die. The training program, run by the always welcome Charlotte Rampling (who could have easily played Lawrence's role in her heyday), immediately strips Dominika of her name and instructs her and the other sparrows, both male and female, in the ways of sexual and psychological manipulation. Every person is a puzzle of need, Rampling's Matron notes, and it is up to the sparrows to make themselves the missing piece and use everything they have within their disposal to extract the information they are tasked in uncovering.

For Dominika, her mission after training is to cosy up to an American CIA operative named Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) in order to find out the identity of his mole, who is someone high up in Russian intelligence. One of the more pleasant developments - possibly the only pleasant development amidst the parade of perversity and brutality - is the way it sidesteps the old chestnut of two spies falling for one another. Dominika and Nate do share an attraction, but he's on to her and she knows he's on to her and so they lay most of their cards on the table. The film may present Nash as someone who may have enough genuine feelings for Dominika to protect and even help her out of her situation, but it also wisely shows him as a lesser of two evils for Dominika. Nate has his own agenda - perhaps it's a more appealing one for Dominika since she stands to gain more out of it, but it nonetheless forces her into another choice she has to deal with, one that places her in even more danger.

Red Sparrow reunites Lawrence with Francis Lawrence (no relation), who directed her in all three Hunger Games films, and it's clear that there's an enormous amount of trust between the two. Lawrence pushes herself here as much as she did in mother! - there's something almost shocking in the ease with which she embodies the different personalities Dominika puts on: the unsettling combination of shame and pride when she confronts her would-be rapist in the Sparrow program, the nonchalant dominance with which she conducts the transaction with Mary-Louise Parker's turncoat politician, the resigned acceptance that washes over her face when she discovers someone she cares about at the hands of an operative with a prowess for torture, the desperate vulnerability with which she pleads to Vanya, "Didn't I do well, uncle?"

Red Sparrow is by no means a perfect film, nor is it even at times a very good one. Those expecting more Bond and Bourne-type action will be disappointed. Those settling in for a sugarcoated spy thriller will be stunned at the film's unrelenting savagery and frequent luridness. Yet there is something cumulative in its potency and, by its end, one feels breathless, wrung out, and reeling from its startlingly bleak and barbarous hold.

Red Sparrow

Directed by: Francis Lawrence

Written by: Justin Haythe; based on the novel by Jason Matthews

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Charlotte Rampling, Mary Louise Parker, Bill Camp, Sergei Polunin, Douglas Hodge