<em>Red Sparrow</em> Is a Shockingly Brutal Espionage Thriller
A bit of service journalism ahead: Don’t go into Red Sparrow expecting an action-packed Cold War drama like last year’s Atomic Blonde, or the kind of humanistic spy thriller so well executed on television in FX’s The Americans. Sure, Francis Lawrence’s new film, starring Jennifer Lawrence, is a tale of espionage, of false identities, and of competing American and Russian interests. But it’s set in the modern day, its main character blows her cover almost immediately upon beginning her mission, and the movie is a 140-minute epic of misery and violence. It begins with a gruesome on-screen leg break and only gets worse from there.
is like , but only if it were directed by -era Paul Verhoeven. That’s something of a compliment, but it’s also a warning: Do not approach the theater unless you’re prepared for a film that swerves towards the lurid and shocking at every chance it gets. This is a secret-agent story in which the secret agent angrily complains that she got sent to “whore school” by her government, one that tries to flesh out the undercurrent of misogynistic coercion inherent in so many of these narratives. On some of those fronts, the film wildly misfires, but for a wide studio release headlined by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, is an admirably bold effort.
