Red Sparrow (2018)
Shallow and palatable are not words I could use to describe Red
Sparrow. This is the antithesis of a typical spy thriller, with its slow
pace that focuses on the more deliberate parts of a spy’s work while also confronting
Dominika’s (Jennifer Lawrence) harsh training and what it meant for her humanity.
I really appreciated this actually; even though the film is long and does feel
like it, it focuses a lot more time on elements of the story that might be
short montages in a Bond or Bourne film.
The biggest beneficiary of this slow, deliberate pace is the
character development and, by extension, the acting. The time spent doing “boring”
things mean that we get to spend more time with the characters, seeing them
interact and the nuances present in their personalities and motivations. This
gives all the actors a lot of good material to work with, enabling Joel
Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts (playing Dominika’s uncle) and Lawrence to
really milk the subtlety in these small moments. Especially when looking at
Dominika’s training, there are a lot of hard-to-watch moments where we learn about
how she is able to see and exploit another person’s desires for her own
benefit.
This slow pacing and seemingly filler material also allows Red
Sparrow to expertly hide some of the clues that lead to its climax. I was not
a big fan of the film’s ending at first because of how it seemingly came out of
nowhere, but after thinking about it some more it actually did the perfect thing
because it left every clue in the right place – each one of them just had so
many other possible intentions that they were buried just perfectly enough to
not be noticed. This might make Red Sparrow an interesting film to
rewatch a few times to see how the story weaves its threads towards the finish.
One other thing I really appreciated with this film was its
aesthetic. Director Francis Lawrence had some really good visual moments in his
direction of the last three films in the Hunger Games franchise, despite
those films’ occasional narrative blunders, and Red Sparrow is no
different. There are a lot of wide establishing shots that take their time to set
the atmosphere of the scene to follow, as well as some well-directed action sequences
towards the film’s end. The editing is done in the film’s conclusion that further
obscures its final moments, helping the surprise factor.
Despite this film’s length, I found it very enthralling. It
is quite brutal and occasionally slow, but there is a lot of payoff towards its
end that make it worth the tough journey. Some great acting from Lawrence and
Edgerton is also at hand because of the rich character development the “mundane”
portions of the film give them. It’s not your usual spy thriller, but for that
reason it is kind of refreshing.
My recommendation: See it, preferably in a theater.
My grade: 80/100
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