Red Sparrow (2018)

Spy films typically have very quick paces, moving from one set piece to another to progress the plot and eventually move towards a large twist or showdown. That’s not a problem with the genre, but it can allow characters to go undeveloped and their plot twists either too predictable or too spontaneous. When that happens, no matter how good the films can be otherwise, they feel shallow and too palatable.

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