Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Francis Lawrence, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons.
With an inflexible attitude to multifaceted intrigues and explicit content, Red Sparrow shows potential for a new spy franchise.
Hunger Games director regroups with Lawrence for an attempt at creating a sexy thriller on a plotline that appears familiar.
Lawrence is Dominika, a former ballerina forced to enter Sparrow School, a secret government program that trains young recruits to manipulate, seduce and kill. She emerges as a dangerous agent, but is trapped in a world she desperately wants to escape. With the lives of her loved ones at risk, Dominika must find a way to take back control and serve justice to those who betrayed her.
How did she get here involved in an intriguing mix of spies, sex and Russia?
Dominika’s famous career at the Bolshoi Ballet is cut short when her dance partner lands on, and breaks, her leg during a performance. Needing to care for her sick mother, she approaches her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), a deputy in Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) for help.
He extorts her into becoming an agent, first sending her off for training at the authoritatively named State School 4 to become a ‘Sparrow’, the SVR’s fleet of attractive men and women who use their sexual wiles to corrupt their targets.
She’s tasked with finding out the identity of a mole in the Russian government from CIA agent Nate Nash (Edgerton), but her affiliations are never apparent as she steers through the hazardous field of treachery, selfishness and endurance at all costs.
