Jennifer Lawrence is making a series of
dubious career moves, and this sexist, brutally violent spy thriller does not
do this sparkling actress justice. (Review by Patrick Compton - 4/10)
Jennifer Lawrence – Hollywood’s top female
movie star – is making some unusual role choices, but I’m not at all sure
they’re the right ones.
Right now, she is dividing audiences and
critics with her films, whether it be the hysterical Darren Aronofsky drama Mother! or this unpleasant spy thriller
by the director of three films in the Hunger
Games franchise, Francis Lawrence.
Not quite trash, and certainly not adult
drama, Red Sparrow falls between a
number of stools and, at 139 minutes, long outstays its welcome.
Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a prima
ballerina in contemporary Moscow who is deliberately injured on stage by her
male partner. No longer able to pay for her ailing mother’s (Joely Richardson)
care, and under threat of being forced out of their apartment, she’s forced to
make a deal with her scumbag uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a top official
in Russian intelligence.
Forced to give up her chosen profession,
Dominika is sent to “whore school” where Charlotte Rampling plays a flinty
principal who teaches students how to use seduction as a tool to extract
information. Dominika has a hateful time of it there, but soon gets drawn into
a plot to befriend a CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) and attempt to discover the
identity of a mole in the Russian government.
That’s enough of the plot, which gets
increasingly patchy and unlikely. The real point of the movie is to undress or
expose its glamorous star as often as possible, or when that becomes too
familiar, to submit her to violent treatment. The sex and nakedness is hardly
erotic, pitched instead at the tastes of drooling schoolboys, while the
violence, including some queasy torture scenes, sometimes runs close to
violence-porn.
All the dialogue is conducted in that
quasi-Eastern European English beloved of directors down the ages with accents
slip-siding all over the place. Why aren’t actors allowed to use their normal
voices? Audiences would automatically make the adjustment and understand.
The movie, which has a glossy, travelogue
element as the action shifts from Moscow to Budapest, Vienna and London, just
about gets by on the performances of the cast, although Lawrence is forced to
be far too impenetrable a character to get the best out of her talents which
thrive on wit and passion. There is no chemistry between her character and the
CIA agent, which doesn’t help matters. There are also cameos for Jeremy Irons,
Ciaran Hinds and Mary-Louise Parker.
Red
Sparrow, which opened on March 2, is showing at
Ballito, Suncoast, Musgrave, The Pavilion, Cornubia, Gateway IMAX, Galleria,
Midlands Mall and Watercrest Mall. - Patrick Compton
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