Red Sparrow asks its star to carry a movie that never decides what it wants to be. Francis Lawrence directs from a script by Justin Haythe, working off Jason Matthews’ 2013 novel. It runs 140 minutes. That length is the first problem, and it is not the last.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.
Dominika Egorova Loses the Bolshoi
Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a prima ballerina supporting her infirm mother. Her dance partner injures her during a performance, ending her career. Her uncle Ivan, deputy director of the SVR, then tells her the injury was deliberate — her ex-partner Konstantin and a rival dancer, Sonya, planned it.
Dominika ambushes them in the Bolshoi showers and injures both with her cane. To dodge prosecution and keep her mother’s medical care, she agrees to work for Ivan. Her first assignment: seduce Dimitri Ustinov, a Russian gangster. He rapes her in a hotel room before Sergei Matorin interrupts and garrotes him.
State School 4 and the Matron
Ivan gives her a choice. Become an SVR operative or be executed for witnessing the killing. She goes to State School 4, the training school for “Sparrows” — operatives who use sexpionage. Charlotte Rampling plays the Matron. The training is sadistic, and Dominika emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow in her class.
The film wants us to feel her transformation. Mostly we watch it happen to her.
Nate Nash and the Marble Problem
Joel Edgerton is Nate Nash, a CIA officer in Moscow. His mole, code-named Marble, nearly gets caught in Gorky Park. Nash diverts the police so Marble escapes unidentified. He is reassigned to the U.S. but insists he is the only person Marble will work with, so he is assigned to Budapest to reestablish contact. The SVR also deduces this.
Dominika is sent to make contact with a CIA officer. He tries to convince her he is the only person she can trust. Jeremy Irons, Ciarán Hinds and Mary-Louise Parker fill out the cast without much to do.
More Style Than Substance
The film premiered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on February 15, 2018, and opened in the U.S. on March 2. It grossed $151 million worldwide. Reviews were mixed, and the complaints were consistent: the runtime, the graphic violence, the sex.
Matthews, a former member of the CIA, advised the production. Lawrence studied ballet for four months, coached by Kurt Froman of the New York City Ballet, with Isabella Boylston as her dance double. Matthews coached Edgerton too. That research shows.
The Nude Scenes and What They Cost
Lawrence accepted the part knowing the character was “really sexual.” She had private nude photos stolen in the 2014 iCloud leaks. She drew a line between the two based on consent. “The insecurity and fear of being judged for getting nude, what I went through, should that dictate decisions I make for the rest of my life?” she said.
Her performance is the best thing here. She plays Dominika as watchful and cold, a woman calculating every room she enters. The film around her does not match that discipline.
Numbers Behind Red Sparrow
- Release: March 2, 2018 (U.S.)
- Runtime: 140 minutes
- Worldwide gross: $151 million
- Metacritic: 53/100
- Score: 5.3/10
What Red Sparrow Gets Wrong
The violence is not the issue. The issue is that Red Sparrow keeps reaching for shock when it already has a better tool: Jennifer Lawrence’s face. The beating in the showers lands. The training sequences land. Then the film spends its back half on a Budapest espionage plot that never generates tension.
Edgerton is fine. Rampling is better, and underused. Irons is wasted. At 140 minutes, Red Sparrow has room for all of them and gives none of them enough.
This is a film with a real performance inside a muddled one. It wants to be a brutal character study and a twisty spy thriller at once, and it commits to neither. The tagline reads “Seduce. Deceive. Repeat.” What it delivers is a long, handsome slog with one great turn at its center.
5.3 of 10.
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