Some stories are just told in the wrong medium. We've all come across one at some point; a series that feels like it could've been told in two compact hours, or a film that lays down so much groundwork for interesting developments that it simply can't give every subplot the necessary room to grow. Red Sparrow, the new spy thriller from director Francis Lawrence, falls into the latter category. With its gripping and violent story of espionage and sex, bolstered by an all-star cast of award-winning actors, Red Sparrow's downfall is the fact that there simply isn't enough room in its considerable run-time -- well over two hours -- to do its own world justice.
The film follows Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), a talented Russian ballerina who performs as a means to care for her ailing mother (Joely Richardson). After suffering a debilitating accident that ends her career short, Dominika turns to her distant uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), a high-ranking officer in the Russian intelligence service.
In return for her mother's care, Dominika is forced to "befriend" a Russian diplomat, who violently rapes her before being murdered by what is revealed to be a government agent. Becoming a witness to the government's crimes, Dominika is given a choice: die, or attend a secret government spy programme and become one of the Sparrows, a network of spies trained to sexually seduce their targets. Dominika shows promise during training, which lands her a on a mission to seduce CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) in order to extract the identity of a mole in the Russians' ranks.
While the plot and the dialogue occasionally dips into pulpy, eye-rolling territory, much of Red Sparrow remains consistently watchable thanks to the calibre of the supporting actors on-screen. Unfortunately, Jennifer Lawrence's muted portrayal of Dominika feels rather bland. The former Hunger Games star tries her best to portray the stoic, silently calculating Russian spy, but instead just comes off as a blank slate. Much of this is due to the rather liberal shortcuts taken with her character's development, done mainly through exposition and forced, unearned moments.
We learn of her talent for reading and manipulating people through exposition, where her uncle literally says something along the lines of, "You've always had a talent for reading people", though we never really get to see her apply those talents beforehand. Those talents also serve her well at the Sparrow School, where she suddenly outperforms everyone, graduating in what seems like a matter of weeks despite her "classmates" having had military training before even being selected for Sparrow training. From there, she suddenly becomes a super-spy, able to match wits with professional CIA agents and Russian intelligence officers with decades more experience.
Meanwhile, supporting actors like Schoenaerts' uncle Vanya, Charlotte Rampling's "Matron" of Sparrow School or Jeremy Irons' General Korchnoi are all made so interesting thanks to the performances driving them. While they collectively don't receive much characterisation (except in one case much later in the film, through exposition), the performances themselves imbue each emotion with so much depth that it's a shame none of it was given much attention.
The lack of meaningful development also extends to elements of the film's plot. The workings of the Sparrow School, for example, are only cursorily explored through the limited perspective of Dominika, and aren't really explored in any real detail, which makes the film's message about sexuality fizzle out as quickly as it begins.
The same can be said of other elements, like the workings of the CIA and the Russian intelligence, or even Dominika's mother and her relationship with the main character. This isn't help that the film is divided into very distinct arcs, very similar to -- again -- TV series, giving me the impression that I've missed several episodes in between every time the film takes one of its many left turns.
Two-and-a-half hours is a long time to ask a person to sit through a film. Red Sparrow certainly asks much of its viewers, while not exactly living up to what it promises to be. It's a film that feels too long, but still not long enough to exactly be good, even if it is certainly made interesting by the supporting actors.
