Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow is a dramatic thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton. It follows ballerina Dominika Egorova, played by Lawrence, who after becoming the victim of an unfortunate injury that sidelines her career, she is recruited to a Russian intelligence branch, known as the Red Sparrow, where she is forced to use her beauty as a weapon. 

I thought that the plot was a lot more interesting than the previews led on. It was surprisingly quite engaging throughout and had a great twist at the end.

I liked the character development for Dominika. She was cunning, smart, ruthless and independent. The costumes for her were chic but her hair looked like a bad wig and at times was a distraction. I also struggled with in the acting from the entire cast, especially Jennifer Lawrence, who is normally a really great actor but in this film I felt like she just wrote it in and didn’t fully commit. She was supposed to be Russian but her accent was terrible. It would fade in and out and was never quite strong enough. Additionally, the rest of the cast, that were supposed to be Russian, also had no accent or a fluctuating one. And hardly any of the Russian language was even spoken, which was an over site for a movie that was supposed to be based in that country. I also would have appreciated it if they would have given a lot more depth in the development of the rest of the cast in the storytelling.

Overall, since I came in with low expectations, I found this movie to be much less of a disappointment than originally anticipated. Now, I’m glad I didn’t watch it in theaters because I think that would have been a waste of money, but for an at home viewing, I found it to be tolerable but not something I would watch again.