Reviews of red sparrow free#

Dominika gets into some trouble with her Hungarian roommate and the leering bureaucrat assigned to monitor her work, then contrives a way to solve her problems: She’ll intercept the chief of staff of an American senator, who has been planning to sell state secrets to Russia for a quarter-million dollars. The cat’s out of the bag nearly from the start, but Dominika and Nate still have to do-si-do a bit before they can actually start working together against the Ruskies. Though she and Edgerton have adequate chemistry onscreen, the screenplay fumbles any heat it might have generated as the characters try to deceive and woo each other simultaneously. One is tempted to draw parallels between the character and Lawrence herself, who performs unimpeachably here but is better than the material.

Reviews of red sparrow free#

He’s in Budapest now, and Dominika is to go there, win his trust and learn the identity of his mole.ĭominika, who until this point has radiated the kind of better-than-this defiance one expects from a ballerina asked to screw gross guys for her country, now slides into survival mode - doing what is demanded of her, but clearly looking for the angles that might make her something like a free agent again. Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) is a CIA man who had to flee Russia after he’s nearly caught meeting a high-level Russian intelligence officer feeding the Americans secrets. Long story short, she thinks she’s agreeing to a one-night stand of seduce-and-betray action so that Vanya will support her sick mother when that night turns into an assassination, Vanya says she knows too much and will be killed if she doesn’t go full-time.Īfter her somewhat intriguing stint at school, where students are forced to become unsentimental about their bodies and do what they’re told with them (“Your body belongs to the state”), Dominika gets an assignment. What uncle would send his niece to such a camp? The question is asked several times here, but more puzzling is why Dominika would go. (Is it wrong to hope that Lawrence takes on something lighter next time, after ‘Mother!’ and now this?) With its highbrow ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’–like ambitions unrealized, ‘Red Sparrow’ ultimately plays a lot simpler than it initially suggests, even if a cathartic conclusion rewards the patience of those with tough constitutions.Jennifer Lawrence’s Dominika Egorova, a star ballerina whose career is destroyed by a gruesome onstage accident, gets sent to Sparrow School by her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a handsy sleaze who ranks high in the SVR. A smashed leg, physical torture and rape are just a few of the atrocities she endures. Paradoxically, ‘Red Sparrow’ itself puts its glum-looking star through a parade of indignities: The movie’s most shocking feature isn’t any of its twisty plot reveals – mainly involving Dominika getting romantically mixed up with a CIA operative (Joel Edgerton) – but the exploitative brutality it rains down on Lawrence. The set-up is not unlike ‘The Hunger Games’ (‘Red Sparrow’ director Francis Lawrence also worked on that saga, helming all but the first chapter), with Dominika’s body technically owned by a callous government. There, she learns to master the arts of sexual and psychological manipulation through a humiliating training process, headed by a menacing Charlotte Rampling (who disappears from the film before we get nearly enough of her). To safeguard her frail mother and maintain their financial security, Dominika accepts the offer of her scheming uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) and enrolls at Sparrow School as a new intelligence recruit. Lawrence plays disciplined Russian prima ballerina Dominika Egorova, whose career ends after a spine-chilling (yet attractively filmed) accident during a performance at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. Not long after the heavy-handed ‘Atomic Blonde’ slipped Charlize Theron into the high heels, platinum wigs and dubious accent of a globetrotting spy, a stony-faced Jennifer Lawrence leads the way in the bleak, excessively long ‘Red Sparrow’, which sets off promisingly but tangles into a confusing clump.