DIRECTOR: RATING:

I★ n the James Bond films, sex with a globe- trotting spy seems to be fun, fun, fun. A martini, a tuxedo, a witty line or two and then it’s off to a luxurious bed with two tanned, muscular bodies. Not so in the new thriller Red Sparrow, where the sex is cold, ugly and often violent.

This dark, meandering and cliche- ridden bummer starring a trying- hard Jennifer Lawrence tries to reach for a cool and stylish look at contemporary spycraft but often falls victim to cartoon violence and a muddled story.

Francis Lawrence, the director of the last three Hunger Games films, reunites with Lawrence for more adult fare but one likely to be remembered more for the outdoor junket photos of Lawrence in a thigh- slit dress in chilly London while her male cocreators wore coats.

Based on a book by former CIA agent Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow stars Lawrence as Dominika, a Moscow ballerina who has to rethink her career after a devastating injury. With the advice of her high ranking spy uncle, she goes to a “sparrow” school where the students are taught to use seduction as their main weapon. “Every human is a puzzle of need,” the stern headmistress played by Charlotte Rampling tells her recruits. “You must become the missing piece and they will tell you everything.”

Dominika isn’t buying it and later complains to her uncle, “You sent me to whore school.” But she’s going to do it — forced to perform sex acts in front of the class — to pay for her sick mother’s care, so that gets her conveniently off the hook morally.

Our heroine is soon unleashed onto the world, a little like Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita but without that film’s visual coherence or empathy.

Lawrence as an actress gives her all here, from learning ballet to adopting a Russian accent that seems swiped from Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. But what really drives Dominika is never very clear, how she goes from a tea- drinking dancer to someone perfectly happy caving in someone’s head with a cane. That’s partly so viewers don’t know where her loyalties lie and will stay intrigued, but she gets lost in what could be a double- cross or triple- cross — or, if you’re in withdrawal from the Olympics — the infamous quad- cross.

Soon you just don’t care. “We can’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth,” one character says of Dominika and he’s right. No trust, no care. She’s like a reflection of the film itself, getting flatter and more boring by the minute.