Red Sparrow

[zico]

4/10. Very disappointing. Spy thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence. Lots of warnings in the film classification about "scenes of prolonged brutal violence, strong nudity (that's code for "wedding tackle"), interrogations and torture scenes", so anyone who might have been expecting to see a David Attenborough special about chirpy sparrows is suitably forewarned. Apparently some scenes were toned down to get it from an "18" certificate to a "15.

Jennifer Lawrence stars as "Dominika", who is a nice Russian girl caring for her sick mother, oh and she's also the principal ballerina at the Bolshoi. However after getting injured and being unable to work and meet her mother's medical bills, she is forced into training as a "Red Sparrow", a type of spy trained in trading sex for secrets, and is sent for Superspy Sex Training at Charlotte Rampling's Finishing Academy for Naughty Spies (school slogan "The Best Place to Come"), where she sits behind a desk in a classroom with other budding Mata's and Hari's to be indoctrinated into ways of seducing people and trained in psychological techniques to find and exploit their weaknesses. She's told her body is just a tool to get what she wants, which reminded me of Glenda Jackson's famous Cleopatra line "all men are fools, and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got". This bit of the film could have been a serious look into brainwashing, but it's skimped in favour of a few set-piece scenes.

Then she's sent abroad on a mission, and the rest of the film centres about whether/how she can get what she wants, with lots of double-crossing by most of the characters (because they're spies, and that's what spies do). For this film to work, you have to be genuinely involved in Dominika's struggles, be rooting for her, and genuinely not think you know what's going to happen. The problem is that it's Jennifer Lawrence, so I just thought "oh, poor old Dominika's getting bashed about and abused yet again, ouch, ooh that's gotta hurt, but I'm sure she'll come out OK in the end". So whether in the end the plot decides that her character succeeds or fails, is good or bad, lives or dies, is truly brainwashed or is independent, betrays or gets betrayed - there's just no real suspense for most of the film. There are various twists and turns, with a good twist at the end. The plot seems a bit patchy, with quite a few bits where you think "hang on, why couldn't they just do A instead of B?". Towards the end, I started to lose interest in the twists and turns of the plot, simply thinking "well,whatever's happening now is going to lead to another scene with more suffering for Dominika".

There are a lot of brutal scenes, but they aren't dwelt on with relish as sometimes happens with directors, so weren't too over the top. It's very much a Jennifer Lawrence vehicle, and the minor characters aren't fleshed out that well. Jeremy Irons looks bored and only interested in his cheque for doing this stuff. The chief baddie looks very much like a young Vladimir Putin (subtle or what?), and most of the characters have very stereotyped Russian accents, with ploddy dialogue. "In my country, women are strong. Stronger than your men". Try saying that, while rolling your "rr's" and you'll have a good idea of much of the film's dialogue. It's also set in a strange time, somehow both in the 1980's where all Russians lived in grim concrete apartment blocks and would queue for hours for a stale turnip, and also somehow in the present day.

The real fascinating question about this film is why one of the most powerful and popular actresses on the planet agreed to take her kit off, and agree to do lots of scenes dressing up and in her scanties, which looks more than a tad exploitative. Maybe she thought that Leonardo Di Capri got an Oscar for suffering a lot in "Revenant" so she'd try a film with lots of suffering. Or is she trying to strike a blow against women being exploited by playing a woman who gets exploited? It's a bit like "Showgirls" meets "Spy who came in from the cold".

Apparently, it's based on a novel, from a former CIA agent (and some of the detail looks authentic) and I imagine the plot would work well in a novel, but all the subtlety and uncertainties have been lost in the transfer to film, and it's not much more than a succession of "Dominika" suffering in a variety of ways, interspersed with double-crossing, triple-crossing, and quadruple-crossing.

Jennifer Lawrence is one of my favourite actresses, and this could have been a really good film, but it's just a mess. Lasts for 2 hours 20 minutes, and doesn't actually drag, but somehow never really manages to convince you about the characters.