Ballerina Gets Brutalized, Goes Ballistic In Nasty 'Red Sparrow'

Red Sparrow is the Black Widow origin movie the Walt Disney Company/Marvel Studios megalith will never, ever make: a sordid, nasty, rated-R-for-tRiggeR-waRning nailbiter about young Russian woman blackmailed into clandestine servitude that captures the existential misery of the espionage trade like no film since Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, despite some willfully opaque plotting.

While is adapted from a 2013 novel (by Jason Matthews, a 33-year C.I.A. veteran, according to his publisher) and went into production more than a year ago, its release is serendipitous to the #metoo /#timesup era: I mean evil and cruel. "You sent me to whore school!" is how Lawrence's character, who goes by the suspicously descriptive moniker Dominika Egorova, puts it. (The formal name of her alma mater is the ominous-sounding State School Four.)