RED SPARROW

One thing that the Cold War gifted movies is the complex intricacies and gritty
reality of espionage stories. In espionage thrillers, a recurring ingredient in the tell-
the-tale formula is the splicing of storyline set-up scenes involving some operatic
performance and a clandestine meeting between a mole and an agent all set to a
pulsating incidental orchestral score that eventually hits a suspense-filled
crescendo.

That’s pretty much the way Red Sparrow started out. Prima Ballerina, Dominika
(Jennifer Lawrence), dressed in a striking red tutu, struts the stage in a grand ballet
recital whilst CIA Agent, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) meets up with a Russian mole
in the darkness of a public park. The opening scenes are set to the increasingly
pulsating tones of a symphonic score playing in the background.

A jaw-jarring accident set off by a misplaced step by her partner sees Dominika
crashing to the stage with a nasty broken leg. The nocturnal meet up in the park
goes south with Nate getting arrested by the Russian police. Act 1, Scene 1 ends
with your appetite sufficiently whet.

As it turns out, there are no accidents. We create our own fate. Dominika’s partner
had created the fate that befell her. She returns the favour in especially brutal terms
that redefine coitus interruptus.

With her career as a ballerina effectively over, Dominika soon learns that the perks
that come with it have also ceased. Her handicapped mum loses her paid nurse and
they might be facing eviction in no distant time.

Help comes in the form of her uncle but there are no free lunches anywhere. Not
even from family. He propositions her into a sexual dalliance with a man of
interest to Russian Intelligence from whom valuable intel is to be extricated.

Things are bound to go awry and they do ever so brutally. Dominika endures a
brutal rape by her target who in turn receives a particularly tragic comeuppance
that again redefines coitus interruptus.
Continuing the movie’s viscerally red theme, Dominika is literally bathed in her
target’s blood as his life ebbs away with bulging eye balls close to bursting out of
their sockets.

When it rains, it pours a crimson deluge. Having witnessed a murder, Dominika is

saved from certain death by her uncle’s intervention. To avoid death, she is
recruited as a trainee sparrow, an arm of Russian Intelligence trained to extract
intel from targets using sexual wiles.

The training regimen for sparrows consists of intense physical exercise and
dehumanizing eroticism. Sparrows are conditioned to see their very beings as state
property to be utilized as the occasion demands with not an ounce of resistance.

Her first assignment as a sparrow is to seduce Nash in order to gain information as

to who was his mole high up in Russian Intelligence. Her not-so-chance encounter
with Nash soon transforms into a romantic (or simulation of it) relationship which
in one defining instance was characterized by an improbable girl-on-top-and-in-
control-on-the-couch sexual encounter that culminated with the as yet unheard of
notion of a one-minute woman.

As an espionage thriller, the thrill in Red Sparrow was in the dialogue-heavy

scenes coupled with the sheer brutality and in-your-face viscerality of its action
scenes. Surprisingly, its erotic scenes added layers of gritty impersonality totally
devoid of passion rather than eroticism to the overall movie.

Red Sparrow played out slow and methodically building up layers as it progressed,
relying on the engaging dialogues to achieve a simulation of reading a page turner
espionage novel.

Where others would have relied heavily on action sequences to engage the
viewer’s attention, Red Sparrow relied primarily on dialogue, bringing in the
action sequences intermittently to make a bold and impactful statement.

Where it would have attracted criticism for the seeming sexualisation of females
(well, one female really), it turned that on its head by putting her in control of the
process.
In the sparrow class where Dominika is asked to submit to the sexual advances of a
male classmate who had tried to force himself on her in the showers, she regains
control of an otherwise humiliating experience by taunting him into inerection.

In her encounters with Nate and a superior who demanded sexual favours of her,
she literally rides one and literally grabs the other by the crotch in turning the table
on him.

The movie was not so much sexually exploitative as it was sexually empowering
for one who ordinarily should be on the receiving end of exploitation.

The only time Dominika was sexually vulnerable in the movie was in the rape
scene with her target early on in the movie. Every other time, she came across as in
control of the situation even when the other party thought themselves in control.
Even the twist at the end of the movie had her checkmate imprint all over it.

As Dominika, Jennifer Lawrence channeled a grown-up version of her Katniss

Everdeen in the Hunger Games franchise to deliver an ice-cold and passionless
character trapped in a men-controlled world of espionage and sexual exploitation.

To take over control of the situation her circumstances had thrust her into, she
chose not to stoop to conquer but to stand ramrod straight in defiance and reverse
the tables.

While her looks were sufficient enough to pull off a convincing slavic look, her
Russian accent wavered noticeably into a recognizable American one in some
scenes.

Red Sparrow chose a dialogue-heavy vehicle to tell its intricate tale of espionage
that harkened to the old days of the Cold War, a Russian roulette of deeply
invasive and passionless eroticism to further the game of one-upmanship and a
brutal barrage of in-your-face violence deliberately spaced to achieve maximum
impact.

It so imbued its ambience with its titular colour of choice that red is indeed all you
can remember when you are done seeing the movie in all its brutality and
passionless eroticism.7/10