Jennifer Lawrence seems eager to break out of her plucky Hunger Games persona in Red Sparrow, which showcases the versatile Oscar-winning star as a sultry Russian spy.
Her performance is the most appealing element of this mostly familiar, ultraviolent espionage thriller about lingering Cold War hostilities, in which everyone’s loyalties are conflicted and nobody can be trusted.
Lawrence plays Dominika, whose career as a Bolshoi ballerina ended because of a gruesome on-stage injury. Desperate for money to care for her ill mother (Joely Richardson), she is recruited for training as a Sparrow, a top-secret team of intelligence officers adept both at psychological deception and physical combat.
“The Cold War did not end, but it shattered into a thousand pieces,” explains Dominika’s ruthless trainer (Charlotte Rampling), before initiating her involvement in a complex scheme to both protect and extract foreign secrets.
As the lines blur between heroes and villains, the perilous assignment leads Dominika to Budapest, where she crosses paths with her duplicitous uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), forms a reluctant partnership with a CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) she’s supposed to seduce, and navigates a maze of betrayal and bureaucratic wrangling while trying to expose traitors and moles.
Lawrence offers a complex and audacious performance that goes beyond a series of wigs and haircuts, or a variety of accents. She brings depth to her portrayal by finding balance in a character whose tough-minded exterior masks an inner vulnerability.
The film marks the fourth collaboration between the star and director Francis Lawrence — no relation — who helmed the final three installments in the Hunger Games franchise. The brutality of his stylish fight sequences offer punctuation for an otherwise talky screenplay.
Otherwise, there’s more talk than action in the screenplay by Justin Haythe (A Cure for Wellness), based on a novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews that seems to count John le Carre among its influences. While it’s deliberately paced and bogs down in exposition, it generates enough character-driven intrigue to maintain a consistent level of suspense for those paying attention.
Still, the film struggles to integrate its broader historical and sociopolitical context beneath the glossy action sequences on the surface. Although it unleashes some shrewd twists in the final hour, the story overall is more convoluted than clever. As a result, Red Sparrow rarely takes flight.
