Red Sparrow tells a story of Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), a beautiful and famed ballerina, who lost her place in the entertainment industry after a freak accident.
When she found out that her injury was purposely done by her dance partner in a plot to replace her with his girlfriend, a blood bath ensued. Using her crutches to beat them to death, Dominika had nowhere to go. She turns to her uncle Ivan Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts), who works in the Russian intelligence for help.
The movie emphasizes that the cold war still continues between USA and Russia. An undercover CIA, Nathaniel Nash (Joel Edgerton), panicked when his mole got in contact with the police. In the heat of the moment, he open fired his gun in the park and got deported. However his contact was subject to search and possible torture. This made Nathan want to come back and save him from his mistake.
Meanwhile, the ex-primadona was given a new job by his uncle as a spy after she was framed in an operation of killing Dimitry Ustinov, a prominent Russian politician. During her training she outshines her classmates but had one flaw, her pride. This caused her to be ejected from the training facility, yet his uncle believed she was special that she was just like him.
She was deployed to seduce Nathaniel Nash to get the name of his mole. However she too fell in love with the CIA agent. Nathaniel for her was the exact opposite of her uncle, honest over manipulative, caring over using. She purposely got herself tortured and risked so much for him that we really felt Dominika's strength and courage through her ordeals.
When the movie is almost at it's end, we were torn wether Dominika was working for the USA or for Russia. Her answer was neither. She managed to frame back his uncle as a mole and with it got a good retirement from her country with honors, she saved Nathan's mole and saved both countries from waging war by giving Russia fake diskettes of classified information.
Red Sparrow comes a shocker for Jennifer Lawrence fans as she literally stripped off her innocence in this movie by being completely naked. This isn't a bad thing though as Jen said she this helped her overcome her personal problems. Good for her. Her acting was great, even if we find her being uncomfortable with smoking she still tried her best to portray the frayed ballerina.
My problem with the movie is that the forced Russian accent tend to throw off non-english native speakers like me. I couldn't understand what they are saying most of the time. Even my movie partner had so many questions every time they talk. When the movie ended, lots of viewers also gave the same sentiments. Some of the character roles weren't explained in the movie and there were questionable transitions that were unexplained. Like killing off a character off-screen.
The movie could have been better if there were subtitles, like seriously. Also Lawrence kicking butt. The movie emphasizes on seduction so much that they keep forgetting that she bloody killed a couple in the bathroom with no training at all. That was bad-ass! And the movie lacked more of that after she was deployed in Budapest. It had more steamy scenes instead, and suddenly she got nerfed by the skin torture guy, to whom gave us goosebumps with the human skinning scene. It was out of character in my opinion.
Just a note that this movie is R-16. When we went to a certain mall, they had Rated-PG as a warning outside the cinema. Ahh, how careless indeed.
Over-all I'd give this movie a 7/10. It's good, but it could have been better.
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