hnapel Review of Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow (2018)

A strong woman uses what she has, which is both body and brains.

[8/10 · 10 May 2018]

The defining nature of intelligence agencies is their secrecy (otherwise they are called news agencies) so for books and movies their benefit is twofold, first is that their hidden nature intrigues, the desire to know and understand what goes on in the back chambers of diplomacy and sometimes its cellars. The second thing is unless word comes out you never can know what really happens which gives fictional writers great freedom in writing their plots as by definition matters are unverifiable. Still the notion of a so called Honey Trap is as old as the Bible (Delilah) at least and if my Sumerian was better I might have found an example from their heritage too. Enter Jennifer Lawrence who I shall call by her real name because keeping track of all aliases her character uses in this movie Red Sparrow becomes tiresome, after all she is a spy. But before becoming a spy our darling is a ballerina and watching those scenes we are reminded of the hype Natalie Portman caused in Black Swan for portraying a believable dancer and if it wasn't for the fact in this movie these are only the overtures and unless when the DVD comes out they reveal it was all cunning CGI they may give Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar for this stage performance too. Then follows a really agonizing scene where she breaks her leg, I mean further down the line we are entertained sufficiently with people getting shot in the head or skinned alive but the leg breaking scene is really nightmare material. Without a job at the opera she becomes vulnerable and a devious uncle who is also part of the Russian intelligence community signs her up for a honey trap job which gets out of hand after which the girl is send to what can be best described as it is eventually done in the movie itself as Whore School. Whore School has an interesting curriculum, oh and failing it means you get one in the head for being no longer useful to the state. From the lessons in seduction our aspiring Red Sparrow learns to identify their targets' vulnerabilities so she can tune her strategy to what they really want which unsurprisingly is often sex. The overall problem for her handlers in the movie is that she is not a spy by vocation but rather tries to make the best of her situation an putting her own interests first. This starts to become clear on her first assignment as she is tasked to spy on an American but takes a liking to him and basically puts her cards on the table. It is quite endearing and also surprising to realize the two main characters in fact never seem to lie to each other while both of them are perfectly trained to do just that. When they inevitably hit it off we see the woman take the initiative which is a nice deviation from the common emphasis on masculinity. The plot that subsequently unfolds is quite intricate and complicated as spy stories tend to be and you will only understand in the end that Jennifer really played out the long con and then longer. Overall I liked this move, it has less cliches which is refreshing and some scenes at Whore School are quite startling so the Puritans can have a field day denouncing them but I think they are not overly vulgar. We see a strong woman and she uses what she has, which is both body and brains. Fine.