Lawrence ‘Sparrow’: Better red than dead
Trailers for "Red Sparrow" have been playing for months, leaving most of us with a dread of bad accents and overhyped plotting. But as I try to explain in the review that wrote for Spokane Public Radio, the movie proved to be a pleasant surprise:
One of the most dependable movie sub-genres is the spy flick. From the serio-comic James Bond films to the more straightforward studies adapted from John Le Carré novels, spy sagas have pretty much everything: intrigue, political commentary, a bit – sometimes more than a bit – of bloodletting and, of course, sex.
“Red Sparrow,” a film adapted from the 2013 novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews, has a bit of all the above. And as directed by Francis Lawrence – the filmmaker responsible for the final three “Hunger Games” movies – it ends up being a passable bit of entertainment.
No one is going to mistake “Red Sparrow” for, say, Martin Ritt’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” Or even Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies.” Still, “Red Sparrow” manages to have its moments.
Jennifer Lawrence – no relation to the director – plays the very Russian Dominika Egorova, a prima ballerina suffering an injury that ends her career. Facing the prospect of being evicted from her apartment, and medical care for her seriously ill mother cut off, Dominika opts for a job offered by her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts).
The job? A simple meet-and-greet with a Russian oligarch, as if anything in a film such as this could ever be simple. And of course it isn’t, leading both to an act of violence and to Dominika facing another choice: death or spy school – though Dominika will later find her own substitute for the word “spy.”
Thus our heroine is forced to become a Sparrow, a kind of super-agent trained how to read and then manipulate people, and to think ahead while figuring out how to escape difficult situations – all of which Dominika puts to good use when she is tasked by her Russian handlers to uncover a double agent, a so-called “mole,” inside their ranks.
She is ordered to make nice with the mole’s CIA contact, an American named Nate Nash (played by Joel Edgerton). Which she does. Ultimately, though, it becomes clear that everyone has a personal set of priorities, leaving Dominika to survive on her own.
Like any good spy film, “Red Sparrow” has a number of twists that you may not see coming. In this way, it resembles another popular series, “Mission: Impossible.” And like those films, it offers a post-climax explanation that explains – well, if not everything, at least enough.
One of “Red Sparrow”’s biggest strengths is its casting. Edgerton is capable enough, as are Charlotte Rampling as a kind of Bond villain – Rosa Klebb comes to mind – who runs the school for Sparrows, and Jeremy Irons as a Russian general. Though lesser known, Schoenaerts has the tougher job, playing a character whose motives are only gradually made clear.
The hardest work, though, falls to Oscar-winning actress Lawrence, who not only has to emote dramatically, dance convincingly and handle a knife believably but speak with an accent that doesn’t make her sound too much like the feminine half of Boris and Natasha.
Oh, and she does a nude scene, too. Which, if nothing else, proves that they don’t give Oscars to shy types.