Jennifer never takes off
‘Red Sparrow’ gets flatter and more boring by the minute
Joel Edgerton is Dominika’s love interest. He’s a puppy next to her tiger; there are no sparks between them.
In the James Bond films, being with a globe-trotting spy seems to be fun, fun, fun. A drink, a tuxedo, a witty line or two and then it’s off to a luxurious, but brief, courtship. Not so in the new thriller Red
Sparrow, where things are 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. The creators may call it sexy but it’s as sexy as a visit to the dentist.
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.
Dominika isn’t buying it and later complains to her uncle. But she’s going to do it 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 — daily, three-hour rehearsals for three months — to adopting a Russian accent that seems swiped from Natasha from and Bullwinkle. Rocky
(“I haf to ko avay vor a vile,” she tells her mum).
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 triplecross or 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. As a sign of how lost the filmmakers get, a scene about whether or not a false drawer will open becomes the most thrilling element for a good 30 minutes.
In addition to Rampling, there are fine turns from Jeremy Irons, Douglas Hodge and Mary-Louise Parker (who nevertheless seems to be in a different film altogether.) On the other side, one of the worst casting decisions was making Joel Edgerton Dominika’s love interest. He’s a puppy dog next to her tiger and there are no sparks between them.
Red Sparrow takes place in the languid, rich air of old European capitals and it gains no energy from the mostly — and curiously empty — highend restaurants, hospitals and swimming pools. There are gorgeous exteriors of Vienna, Budapest, London and lush hotel interiors. The soundtrack is Tchaikovsky and Mozart. It’s like an extended ad for Chanel, except for all the gore.
Gore? Oh yes. There are two rape scenes, several instances of torture — one with a hospital-grade skin peeler — public and naked degradations, a gross garroting and a dead body in a tub with its head in a plastic bag. The bloodiness in juxtaposition with the bloodless high-end luxury is jarring — but not in a good way.
Courtesy of screenwriter Justin Haythe, the cliches are all here, from the matching sweatsuits the sparrows wear as they jog on their snowy campus to watching spies wordlessly pass packages in dark and empty parks.
This is a film in which interrogators coolly demand confessions in clipped European accents. It’s where a demented torturer lovingly unrolls his bag of evil tools like a contestant with a knife roll on
Top Chef. Then he intones: “Do you know how long it takes to peel skin from a human being?” (Spoiler alert: “Hours and hours.”)
Come to think of it, that might be more fun than sitting though Red Sparrow.