Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow relate the tale of how a young ballerina, Jennifer Lawrence, became the best Russian spy overnight, of course after undergoing a training program for juvenile recruits at an ethically controversial Russian institute called “The Sex Games”. The movie is totally failed attempt at an atmospheric and refined cold-war thriller with a romantic storyline. A wannabe clever espionage drama where the chemistry between the Russian agent and her American counterpart is too feeble to serve as the movie’s sole foundation. It offers nothing else in its long runtime – neither thriller-like suspense nor action. With her baby face, Lawrence is the casting fuck-up of the year. Matthias Schoenaerts is the only one who gives a believable acting performance; he even looks like Putin! The music “inspired” by Goldsmith’s Basic Instinct is supposed to evoke a seductive sexual tone. The similarly conceived Atomic Blonde, which doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not, is the clear winner here. (04/03/2018)

A solid, old-school-style spy thriller. The director, Lawrence, knows what he’s doing, everything looks great and the big budget is obvious, but the pace is very slow and sometimes unnecessary twists drain the movie's power. Jennifer is appropriately stiff or even machine-like (so much that you wonder how much she’s just acting), but at the same time incredibly unattractive – nobody would want to get in her bed. The controversial nude scene really is superfluous and the movie could have done without it. Howard’s music is great. And Schoenaerts really does look a bit like Putin. (07/09/2019)

A spy thriller with a pleasantly old-school edit, in which it's not about action, but rather suspense, and who, whom, why and how it ends up transferring. I liked it, and both Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton in particular were great. But I especially have to highlight the James Newton Howard soundtrack - he was heavily inspired by Tchaikovsky and if his overture was played in a classical Russian music concert, probably few would think that it doesn't belong there. (24/03/2019)

Too bad that so many of Jennifer Lawrence’s nude selfies "leaked" online, otherwise the film could have been saved by her nude scenes, but this way I was just bored. In the role of Dominika, she once again proved that her poker face can compare with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Affleck and, after his cosmetic enhancements, Mickey Rourke. The film was full of clichés, my “favorite” one being how you can easily tell that Russians are the bad guys. The chief of military must wear leather boots, and anyone who would otherwise be in doubt, is suddenly clear. If espionage went the way it was shown in the film, the world would be much more fun. My takeaway from more than two hours of boredom - ballerinas are not what they seem to be. (08/09/2018)

I get it, Jennifer Lawrence was meant to play a completely merciless and emotionless murderer. It’s a shame she is like that in most of her movies. Another issue I saw in the fact that it is an espionage thriller, but at the end I was thoroughly confused about what happened. For an espionage thriller there was extremely little suspense and action, so during those two and a half hours I almost wondered whether to cook dinner or start dusting. Luckily it was saved by the great beauty of Jennifer, and her two acting colleagues – Joel Edgerton and Matthias Schoenaerts. I respect them so I finished to movie to the end and I admit that it is at least average. (14/07/2018)