Red Sparrow was being teased to be one of the biggest movies of 2018. Starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Francis Lawrence, the story centers around a Russian spy turned covert intelligence agent in the thriller.
Check out the trailer here:
What we see in the trailer is a suspenseful movie filled with twists as Jennifer Lawrence depicts a character that goes outside her comfort zone as an actress. From the trailer we could except the main character to be worn down with psychological manipulation until she loses her sense of self. But what we get is none of that.
The movie is based on the 2013 novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews. The movie is sexually charged but at times it gets rather uncomfortable from the scenes of assassination, torture and attempted rape. The rape scenes were horrific and not really well done. It was shocking to see it on such a large screen and I felt like most of the time it didn’t have to be depicted that brutally- and frequently. One wants to come out of the theater satisfied with the movie they watched, but some of the scenes made me want to walk out. Also in the movie, Lawrence gets deported to a “whore school” and the scenes are not really that great even though it is supposed to set up the tone for the entire movie. It really just adds time to the already long movie, so it should have just been shortened. How many times are you going to show an uncomfortable sex scene for us to get the point?
The movie is also way too long. It had several scenes that should have been cut because the main point already got across. I don’t know why they had so many scenes at the pool? Also, it made it very easy to lose interest. It was so long and confusing that you didn’t really want to stick around for the whole picture. I understand wanting to show the whole picture in its entirety but two and a half hours is a long time especially when the plot is almost never advancing and when it does, it is confusing. I couldn’t help but be glued to the screen for every single detail that went on so I could depict what was going on. I think I spaced out for two minutes and lost half of what was going on.
Matthias Schoenaerts plays her leering Uncle Vanya, and he pimps his niece out, which is a lovely thing to do. The viewer doesn’t even really know why he is doing it in the first place. Then she goes to America and falls in love with an American CIA operative named Nate Nash, which you don’t even know why they have crossed paths in the first place. Make sure you pay attention to their dialogue because I could barely understand it. I think Vulture says it best, “the script is so convoluted.”
When the ending scene finally happens, almost no one understands how the events lead to it. Until the movie flashes back to multiple scenes where Lawrence is setting up the enemy. In a good movie, everyone can understand the ending of the movie without the help of flashbacks. Then when you get the explanation you don’t even clearly understand how she did it. Don’t ask the person sitting next to you what’s happening because they don’t know either.
Overall Jennifer Lawrence was great in this movie and really saved it from being absolutely horrible. Or I might have a bias because she is one of my favorite actresses but the movie falls short. I feel if you have a really long confusing movie, there should be a lot of scenes that grab the audience’s attention to make them think, but this movie only has a couple stand out scenes. One walks away from almost a three-hour movie with no gratification for even watching it. If you’re thinking of watching this movie, stay home and hopefully it is not nominated for any undeserving awards.
