Review of Red Sparrow (2018) by Charlie P — 29 Mar 2018

Having her ballerina career cut short by a on-stage accident, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is hired by her Uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts) to serve in the Russian intelligence system. After a series of brutal training, she is given a mission to either track down a "mole" within the system and to investigate the CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) or suffer deadly consequences for disobedience....

Red Sparrow is basically the Black Widow film that people have been wanting Marvel Studios to make for a long time. The narrative may be a bit confusing at times, but the impressive cinematography and the underrated composer James Newton Howard's atmospheric score does manage to elevate this film above the average level that Francis Lawrence brought to the Hunger Games sequels.

Speaking of that, although Jennifer Lawrence's acting ability hasn't been that great over the last few years and her attempt at a Russian accent is a bit odd, she does manage to do an OK job as a emotionally damaged spy. Aside from Jeremy Irons giving it all with the short amount of time he has, a lot of the other characters such as Nate and Ivan aren't given much to do with their archetypes.

Overall, Red Sparrow is a good insight into the dark side of intelligence service, that should give the spy genre a well-made, yet derivative at times experience.