Red Sparrow

By: Arlene Allen

I am going to be upfront about this movie right away – I hated this film. If I had not been seeing this as press, I would have walked out. It’s so misogynistic, filled with multiple rapes, torture and other degradations and abuses of women. It’s grizzly, exploitative and distasteful. Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to play a strong female lead, but unlike Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) of Atomic Blonde or even Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in the Marvel universe, the character of Dominika spends most of her on screen time as a victim and her sole exploits are those pitting her against her abusers or would be abusers.

Dominika (Lawrence) was a prima ballerina until a terrible accident destroys her career. Worried about what will become of her and her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, she agrees to work with her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a high ranking Soviet intelligence officer. This leads to the first rape of the film as Dominika was supposed to (I’m actually not sure what) seduce him? It all goes horribly wrong and instead of Dominika being the victim she is threatened with death unless she sells herself to the state and joins the “Sparrow” program. The Sparrow program is a school for Russian spies that doesn’t seem to do much other than train their students in the art of sexual manipulation. Here there is another near rape, as she’s not the victim in terms of the story; however, the school’s matron (Charlotte Rampling) demands she let the perpetrator finish the job. As Matron says, “Your body belongs to the state now.” The Sparrow program is referred to as a “whore school” within the film. I imagine this was a movie made before the realization of the #MeToo movement.

After Dominika is expelled from the school for besting both the Matron and the would-be rapist, she is sent on her first real mission: seek out an American operative named Nash (Joel Edgerton) and find out who the mole in Soviet intelligence is that’s been feeding him information. What follows here is more distasteful sex that seems to serve no purpose other than letting Lawrence get naked. There are scenes of brutal torture, including skinning people alive. Dominika is tortured so obscenely (while mostly naked) that it took all my willpower to stay in my seat.

The film does have a twist ending that shows Dominika seemingly having the upper hand, but oh, what we go through to get there. The pacing is slow to the point of boredom. There’s actually very little action so if you were expecting another Atomic Blonde or even a Black Widow pastiche, you are going to be sorely disappointed. The only butt Dominika kicks is that of her former dance partner, who was most likely responsible for her career ending injury. There seems to be no point whatsoever to this film besides sexual manipulation, unless it’s Russia-baiting. I’m not sure that’s entirely a beneficial thing right now, either, with tensions between the US and Russia escalating daily.

I’ve already mentioned the slow pace as it crawls up until the very end. The fake Russian accents grated on my nerves as well as not one of the lead actors is from Russia.  If I can find one good thing to say about this hot mess, it would be that the cinematography is gorgeous. Unfortunately, that’s not reason enough to see this film, which I would recommend avoiding at all costs.