J-Law’s latest is a real spy stinker
Red Sparrow C ert: 16 2hrs 19mins ★★★★★
Jennifer Lawrence was in London the other week and thoroughly out of sorts she seemed too, snapping needlessly at the saintly Joanna Lumley at the Baftas and barely cracking a smile all visit. Who knows what might have disturbed her normally sunny disposition, but I have a theory. She might have just seen her latest film, Red Sparrow. Because, my goodness, it’s bad.
From the moment I realised that Lawrence and her largely British supporting cast (leaving aside, for the moment, Australian Joel Edgerton, who’s playing an American spy) were going to do the whole thing in cod Russian accents and that there was another buttock-numbing two hours 15 minutes-plus of this silliness still to come, I felt my spirits sink. Lawrence has already been nominated for an Oscar four times and is reputedly the highest paid actress in the world, so what on earth induced her to do this sort of pap? And, yes, I do realise the answer is probably contained in that last sentence somewhere.
This is a film that couldn’t be more out of step with this feminist #timesup age. It’s directed by a man – Francis Lawrence, who directed Lawrence (no relation) in the last three instalments of The Hunger Games – and is adapted by a man (Justin Haythe) from a novel written by another man, Jason Matthews.
And yet it is a young woman, Lawrence, still only 27, who gets to play Bolshoi ballet-dancer-turned-seduction-specialist-spy Dominika Egorova, stripping down to her underwear, pulling on the cutaway swimsuits and being tortured while seminaked in the unedifying process. Lawrence’s presence in such a titillating, glossy-looking, male-fantasy-fulfilling production will undoubtedly ensure the film finds a commercial audience, but no one should be proud of that.
It’s the tone that is the main problem here, as injury brings Dominika’s dancing career to a premature close, forcing her to look for other forms of employment so she can care for her invalid mother (Joely Richardson). Thank goodness she’s pretty and uncle Vanya (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts) is high up in the Russian security services…
Play what ensues with tongue in cheek and an empowered female protagonist and this can still work pretty well, as Charlize Theron showed in Atomic Blonde last year. But play it straight, as the director clearly intends to here, and the result oscillates between the sleazy and the downright ridiculous.
Having witnessed a statesponsored murder at truly offputting close quarters, Dominika is given a Nikita-style choice. Either be killed to guarantee her silence or it’s off to Seduction School, where she will become a ‘sparrow’ trained in the dark art of seducing foreign agents for the good of the motherland.
‘Velcome to State School Four,’ purrs Charlotte Rampling absurdly. ‘You vill know me as Matron.’
It’s difficult, nay impossible, not to get the giggles as this tasteless and tiresomely overextended section gets under way, with the students being trained to deliver sexual pleasure on demand.
Eventually, a real mission looms, with old Uncle Vanya keen-to-discover the identity of the mole who has been delivering secrets to a CIA agent (Edgerton).
Lawrence is a fine actress but this is not her finest hour by a long way, as she struggles to maintain both dignity and Russian accent.
And Edgerton seems miscast: his screen chemistry with Lawrence, 16 years his junior, is modest.
‘This is a film that couldn’t be more out of step with this feminist #timesup age’
And I can’t believe any of the cast – Jeremy Irons, Douglas Hodge, Ciaran Hinds or Richardson – will look back on this with pride.
Almost from the outset, it’s clear this will be a game of bluff and counter-bluff, but there are only so many double-crosses a writer can pull and keep an audience on side.
Sadly, Haythe goes much too far, ensuring we’re long past caring whether Dominika is working for the Russians, the Americans or, indeed, anyone else.
Alas, this is one sparrow that just doesn’t fly.