Atomic Sparrow?
Well, no matter what you think of Jennifer Lawrence you got to give her credit for at least taking more unusual roles than what she used to. But just like last years disjointed Mother! It doesn’t matter how good her performance may be if the film surrounding her is not that great. Just for context purposes, I didn’t really enjoy Mother! I thought the film was definitely original and different but the final product was a giant mess. I’m happy to report that in my opinion, Red Sparrow is a better film and less of a mess, although it still has its issues.
So Red Sparrow follows the story of Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) a Russian ballerina who encounters a career-ending injury. Without many other options and in need of money to support her sick mother she takes upon her Uncle’s offer to assist and then join the Russian intelligence as an operative in the sparrow division, which are agents trained in seducing their targets.
If you’re looking for something new and original in a spy film this really isn’t it, the only new thing it offers is that there are quite a few sexual scenes at the start which honestly don’t really add that much to the film. What I mean by this is that the film sets up the premise of these ‘sparrow agents’ being able to seduce their targets, use their body by any means necessary and cater to their target’s deepest and darkest desires to complete their mission. That sounds like a pretty interesting premise for a story; you could do a lot of playing around with the main character and other characters emotions, also messing with their heads throughout the journey (who to trust? Do they really care? And so on). Although the film never fully capitalises on this premise and instead just goes the usual cliché spy route seen in countless other spy films, which is a shame because this film had promise to offer something unique and different to the espionage genre.
One of the biggest issues that the film has apart from some very questionable accents is that it’s just way too long. This is the type of film that would’ve been perfect for an hour and forty minutes or even two hours at most, but two hours and twenty minutes is really stretching it. The story really isn’t captivating enough to keep your interest for that long and neither are the characters, which are already hard enough to relate to or invest any sort of emotional attachment with whatsoever. They try to make you care about Dominika’s mother by having her share quite a few scenes with Dominika, but honestly you could care less about what happens to her mother and these scenes just become an inconvenience after a while, as they slow down the plot and don’t really pose any threat or real motivation apart from oh hey my mum’s sick (it just felt like lazy writing). I get what they were trying to do but it just doesn’t work here, maybe if her mother was in a hospital or actually being held by the government as collateral or they spent time building their relationship at the beginning then I would’ve been more invested. Oh and the accents… well, what can I say? They’re not great; I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t want to bash the film anymore because honestly there are some pretty good scenes especially in the first half of the film which keeps with the seductive premise they set up. Although about halfway through the film they just drop this element for some really boring and generic plot points, that you’ve seen done before way better in other spy films. It also tries to surprise with a lot of twists and turns throughout the film, but if you’ve seen a spy film before these twists and turns are pretty easy to figure out before they’re revealed. Overall though the film has its moments and the good definitely outweighs the bad but the disappointment from what this film could’ve been compared to what it ended up being is upsetting, to say the least. Even though Jennifer Lawrence does give a good performance and there are quite a couple of memorable scenes it doesn’t mean that Red Sparrow is a good film. It’s definitely ambitious at times but never as intriguing, compelling or clever as it thinks it is.
If you’re looking for a spy film set in Russia with a strong female lead, give Atomic Blonde a shot instead, it’s not great but it knows what it wants to be and has some impressive action throughout. Both films are style over substance but Atomic Blonde is a lot more fun, plus the twists and turns are a bit more surprising.