A review of the new action thriller “Red Sparrow”
A beautiful and talented actress decides to branch out into an action thriller in which she plays a tough secret agent, but this is not Charlize Theron in “Atomic Blonde”, rather it is Jennifer Lawrence who has been making some bold choices since completing the “Hunger Games” franchise: “Joy”, “Passengers”, “Mother!” and now “Red Sparrow” – the last reuniting her with Francis Lawrence, the director of the last three “Hunger Games” films.
While her Russian accent is faltering, Lawrence is never less than compelling to watch as Dominika Egorova, a ballet dancer who suffers a career-crushing accident which compels her to become a ‘sparrow’, an espionage asset who uses seduction as a secret weapon.
From the beginning – intercutting between her final dance sequence and a nighttime park scene involving an American agent played by Joel Egerton – the movie is always gripping, densely plotted and endlessly dark, both visually and metaphorically, and it contains some genuinely disturbing sex and torture scenes, so this is not Katniss Everdeen we are viewing and Lawrence has exposed herself here both physically and psychologically.
It is hard to know, however, what makes her character so able both to take and inflict violence and to make the transition from ballerina to brutalist. So, in short, an unusual work of some ambition but limited appeal.