Red Sparrow (2018)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Prima ballerina Dominika Egorova faces a bleak and uncertain future after she suffers an injury that ends her career. She soon turns to Sparrow School, a secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young people to use their minds and bodies as weapons. Dominika emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow after completing the sadistic training process. As she comes to terms with her new abilities, she meets a CIA agent who tries to convince her that he is the only person she can trust.
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53 films that influenced Red Sparrow
What critics say influenced Red Sparrow
Directed by Francis Lawrence, Red Sparrow wants to combine the lurid danger of La Femme Nikita with the cerebral suspense of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
But Red Sparrow isn't an ass-kicking female-driven flick in the vein of Atomic Blonde, Haywire or La Femme Nikita, or even the action spin on Black Swan that it nods to in its name.
And no, the Oscar winner can’t quite pull off the Black Swan-meets-La Femme Nikita role.
It’s another in a line of female-centric thrillers that began with Luc Besson’s 1990 La Femme Nikita, in which a woman’s power is always double-edged.
Our heroine is soon unleashed onto the world, a little like Luc Besson’s “La Femme Nikita” but without that film’s visual coherence or empathy.
Red Sparrow is basically La Femme Nikita (and its American remake, Point of No Return) with a Russian accent and a lot more graphic sexual content.
Lawrence no alcanza el formalismo de obras de la talla de Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, pero los clásicos espías de John Le Carré no parecen haber sido el norte del autor Jason Matthews, cuya novela homónima llega a la pantalla a través de la adaptación de Justin Haythe para introducirnos a una agente del gobierno que no ejerce este oficio por voluntad propia, sino a modo de amenaza y tras una cruenta serie de abusos.
It’s presented as a slow, cerebral espionage thriller, more in the vein of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy than a female-led action movie like Salt or Haywire.
You don’t need to have seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or A Most Wanted Man, amongst recent films that may’ve served as inspiration to Lawrence, to know where this goes, which isn’t so much an unexpected direction, as just an expectedly unexpected direction.
Directed by Francis Lawrence, Red Sparrow wants to combine the lurid danger of La Femme Nikita with the cerebral suspense of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
But even as we are appreciating what is successful, starting with the impeccable work of Irons, Rampling and Schoenaerts, it’s hard not to notice that the level of intensity, intelligence and involvement here does not reach the level of classic all-in spy movies like the Bourne films or Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and Anton Corbijn’s “A Most Wanted Man,” both based on novels by the genre’s master, John le Carré.
Red Sparrow is like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but only if it were directed by Showgirls-era Paul Verhoeven.
But it’s impossible to watch it without comparing it to last summer’s stylish and kinetic “ Atomic Blonde ,” another physically demanding espionage thriller starring Charlize Theron .
With her bottle-blonde locks, facility with a knife and dour Eastern European playground, Jennifer Lawrence's "Red Sparrow" is seemingly the 2018 version of Charlize Theron's "Atomic Blonde."
But Red Sparrow isn't an ass-kicking female-driven flick in the vein of Atomic Blonde, Haywire or La Femme Nikita, or even the action spin on Black Swan that it nods to in its name.
This spy thriller has been marketed as a trashy exercise laden with sex à la Atomic Blonde , but this actually wants to be a slow-burning intellectual spy thriller à la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as well.
It chooses not to tread the same ground as Charlize Theron's Atomic Blonde by making the heroine a talented ass-kicker, instead making Lawrence's talent that of seduction, and that does definitely give it a particular sleazy charm that the former film hinted at, but didn't commit to.
Indeed, Red Sparrow contains little of the wit and wisdom of the best of yesteryear’s spy flicks — that gathering includes last summer’s unjustly ignored Atomic Blonde, an espionage caper as stylish as this one is stuporific.
Director Francis Lawrence, along with cinematographer Jo Willems and editor Alan Edward Bell, fashions a languid atmosphere that might cause you to recall the one Hitchcock managed in classics like “Notorious,” and they are abetted in their efforts by a surprisingly lush and evocative score by James Newton Howard, whose shimmering strings have a touch of the romanticism Bernard Herrmann brought to films like “Vertigo.”
Specifically, a good chunk of this movie owes a large debt to Notorious, from the relationship between a European national and an American spy, the question of who’s on which side, and the 1946 film’s deliciously wicked final moments.
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No one is going to mistake “Red Sparrow” for, say, Martin Ritt’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”
Or that the ending exchange of prisoners comes right out of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold?
Films like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or, more recently, Bridge of Spies are studies in betrayal, subterfuge and human weakness.
Based on the novel by Jason Matthews, Justin Haythe's screenplay has more in common with cerebral spy films such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" than action flicks like "Atomic Blonde".
A third act knife fight is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Torn Curtain , as every puncture wound is felt in the audience's own guts - phantom stabs that make us squirm in our seats.
Director Francis Lawrence, along with cinematographer Jo Willems and editor Alan Edward Bell, fashions a languid atmosphere that might cause you to recall the one Hitchcock managed in classics like “Notorious,” and they are abetted in their efforts by a surprisingly lush and evocative score by James Newton Howard, whose shimmering strings have a touch of the romanticism Bernard Herrmann brought to films like “Vertigo.”
Featuring a duo of impressive performances – three if you include Mary-Louise Parker‘s unexpectedly hilarious turn as an American official for sale – and balancing its methodical pacing against the occasional burst of graphic violence, the best reference point Red Sparrow may just be a movie like David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises.
In fact, aside from a cringe-inducing knife fight that rivals the brutality of Eastern Promises’ iconic scene, there are no real setpieces to speak of.
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This is fairly jaw-dropping stuff, even if lacking some of the ruthlessness of a Paul Verhoeven (whose cartoonish genre films, such as Showgirls and Starship Troopers, dwell on similarly perverse forms of moral education).
Red Sparrow is like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but only if it were directed by Showgirls-era Paul Verhoeven.
Joely Richardson plays Dominka’s deathly-ill uninsured mother, a most scary Charlotte Rampling is “The Matron,” the Lotte Lenya-esque agent-trainer ripped out of “From Russia, With Love,” and a delightfully tipsy Mary Louse Parker plays a “mark.”
A diminutive operative with a knife in her shoe, Klebb (an indelibly ferocious Lotte Lenya) appears in the Cold War-era film “ From Russia With Love .”