Summary
7 tech score
“Red Sparrow” (20th Century Fox)
Jennifer Lawrence stars in the new thriller “Red Sparrow” and the good news is it is a better movie than “mother!”. Of course that is a low bar so let me also add it is as good a movie as “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2.” This new movie requires Lawrence to present a woman of great intellectual and physical attributes and she does this convincingly. It also places her in a scenario which has multi twists and turns but is explainable in the end. That is a real plus.
Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is a principal ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. She lives with her sickly mother (Joely Richardson) and concentrates on her career. However an accident ruins any chance of a further dancing career. Her only hope for the future arrives through her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts) who arranges for her to go to a school for “Red Sparrows”. This school trains her to use her mind and body for the advantage of the Soviet government.
Her first assignment is to go to Vienna and make contact with Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) a CIA agent. She must get a single piece of information out of him, the name of a CIA mole in the Russian government. Seeing how she maneuvers this is the heart of the film.
Lawrence’s performance is not a career high. She does not allow the audience to ever get a sense of knowing who Dominika is. She is a cipher at the start of the movie and she remains so until the end. Her accent seems a bit wobbly in parts and has to be accepted at face value in order for anyone to be able to enjoy the movie. Still she manages to hold the audience’s attention which is the primary requirement, and the script does most of that for her.
She is surrounded by a good supporting cast. Richardson and Edgerton are solid in their roles as are Jeremy Irons, Ciaran Hinds, Charlotte Rampling and Mary-Louise Parker. It seems even the smallest role is presented with precision.
The film is a bit slow at times but the pacing picks up at the end when the plot is at ts most critical. There are twists and turns throughout the entire film but audiences want to be truly alert in the last twenty minutes. That is when you get whiplash deciding who to believe or not.
The movie is rated R for violence, profanity, gore and nudity.
“Red Sparrow” is a movie that is good even for audiences suffering Jennifer Lawrence burn out. Those people need to just forget Lawrence is the star and just enjoy the movie for what it is – a suspenseful thriller that will keep you guessing right up to the end.
I scored “Red Sparrow” a flying 7 out of 10.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
