![]() These scenes will start with an overt, appraising focus on Dominika's body, because apparently it's important to establish that Jennifer Lawrence is hot before proceeding to violate the character. It's not just the fact that are multiple rape (or near rape) scenes in the story it's the way those scenes are shot. What stands out about Red Sparrow instead is its perverse fascination with brutalizing women (mostly Dominika, but other female characters, too) in ways that are largely sexualized, but sometimes merely physical. Being formulaic isn't a crime if you manage to do it well, though the film never dazzles within the confines of its genre tropes. And, in accordance with Roger Ebert's law of economy of characters, of course Marble will end up being a character that we've already met, whose identity Dominika will learn, which will allow her to pull off her big con (and without which her plan would have fallen apart completely, so good thing she had the confidence to believe she'd get that crucial piece of information when she started putting all her pieces into play).Īs a spy story Red Sparrow is largely derivative but, then again, most genre movies are. ![]() She appears to begin working with the CIA, then the film suggests that that was just a ploy, then it turns out that she was playing everyone because of course a person who has had, like, six weeks of training and is on their first mission is going to be able to outmaneuver a bunch of people on both sides who have at least a decade more experience, and of course she's able to anticipate how things are going to shake out and plant pieces of information along the way that will support her story in the end. Nash, who has actually been working as a spy for some time, isn't fooled by the novice who follows him around for a day before trying to engineer a "chance" meeting with him and switches from being the SVR's target to trying to flip Dominika and turn her into an asset for the CIA. Dominika accepts this devil's bargain and after a brief period of training is assigned to Budapest and tasked with making contact with Nash, who has now set up shop there in the hope of reestablishing contact with Marble.Ī lot of the plot turns from this point are pretty much as expected. ![]() In the aftermath of that operation she's given the option of becoming a "Red Sparrow," a spy trained to use sex to gain the trust of targets, or being executed as a witness to the fallout of her unofficial first operation. Now without a means of supporting her disabled mother (Joely Richardson), she is preyed upon by her uncle, Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), an SVR director who recruits her to be a honey pot to lure a target into a compromised position. The other is about Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), a ballerina whose career is ended after her leg breaks in horrific fashion during a performance. ![]() One is about Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent posted in Moscow who has to be hastily spirited back to the US after blowing his cover by providing a distraction that allows his source, code named "Marble," to escape following a meeting. You can do better with respect to films and you can do better by someone as talented as Jennifer Lawrence.Īdapted by Justin Haythe from the novel of the same name by Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow tells two intersecting stories. It's a 140 minutes which would be reduced to about 15 if you excised all the scenes demonstrating, suggesting, or referencing sexual assault, coercion, harassment, or what the film characterizes as prostitution but which more closely resembles slavery. Ostensibly a spy thriller, albeit of the most predictable, slow-moving, and needlessly convoluted kind, Red Sparrow is really just a perfunctory means of festishizing violence towards women, even though it seems to see itself as an empowerment narrative. Red Sparrow is a film that dares to ask: how many rape scenes is too many? If you've heard the term "male gaze" but aren't sure exactly what it means and would like to see a visual example, then this is the movie for you. Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton
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