Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, torture, graphic nudity, profanity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang
Red Sparrow has the crisp, nefarious and
extremely nasty verisimilitude of actual spycraft, and with good reason; it’s
based on a 2013 novel by Jason Matthews, who spent 33 years with the CIA’s
Directorate of Operations, where — as acknowledged in a 2015 New York Times interview — he recruited
and managed foreign agents, “often in places where such activity was
forbidden.”
Justin Haythe’s screenplay
adaptation has the slow burn of a complex John Le Carré espionage thriller,
which must please Matthews, a fan of both that author and Ian Fleming. Frankly,
I’m astonished; Haythe has no obvious experience with spy thrillers, and is
most recently known for junk such as The
Lone Ranger and the execrable A Cure
for Wellness. It’s nice to see this significantly more polished side.
Austrian director Francis
Lawrence obviously has developed a rapport with star Jennifer Lawrence, having
helmed her final three Hunger Games
outings. Red Sparrow is far more
serious stuff: a thoroughly absorbing saga of regret, duplicity and
reprehensible manipulation, set in a clandestine zone of prickly, real-world
geopolitics.
Matthews must be congratulating
himself for prescience: Such scheming cloak-and-dagger stuff seems even more
credible now, at a time when Russia’s destabilizing activities have become
daily front-page news.
Lawrence stars as Dominika
Egorova, a talented member of the Bolshoi Ballet, introduced as she takes the
stage for a standard performance (if anything done by Bolshoi dancers can be
considered “standard”). Francis Lawrence cross-cuts from these scenes to others
involving the late-night exchange of information between deep-cover CIA
operative Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) and a mole buried deep within upper-level
Russian security operations.
Both sequences go awry. Dominika
suffers an on-stage accident that destroys her career — an early, horrifying
example of this film’s willingness to shock — while Nate’s meeting is exposed
by the chance arrival of Russian police officers.
For Dominika, it’s a shattering,
end-of-the-world catastrophe, and not merely because she spent her entire
childhood training to be a dancer. She’s the only child of an invalided single
mother (Joely Richardson) to whom she is devoted, and whose care — and the
reasonably nice apartment in which they live — have been funded by her Bolshoi
career.
Salvation — if it can be termed
thus — comes from Dominika’s Uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), who has kept a
protective gaze on his deceased brother’s family. But Vanya’s interest is far
from benign; his “solution” to Dominika’s plight involves drawing her into his
realm of spycraft, with the specific goal of molding his niece into a
seductress able to corrupt Westerners into betraying their country.
Hardly a healthy attitude for an
uncle to have about his only niece.
Jennifer Lawrence’s fitful effort
at a Russian accent isn’t entirely successful (and should have been abandoned);
her shattering depiction of a well-mannered young woman reluctantly forced into
heinous behavior — seeing no other option — is far more credible. Lawrence’s
performance is heartbreaking at times, Dominika’s brave front constantly on the
verge of slipping, but held in check by grim determination.
And by something else, which
Vanya likely sensed long ago: a ruthless streak. Dominika tolerates only so
much, after which her flash-point willingness to strike back can surprise
people.
She needs that pride and
resourcefulness, once sent to so-called “Sparrow School,” where similarly
attractive young men and women are trained in the ways of seduction and
manipulation by the coldly clinical Matron (Charlotte Rampling). The “lessons”
are brutally debasing and explicit, the goal being to move students beyond
emotional squeamishness, so they — and their bodies — become instruments of
communist perfection.
(The oft-interviewed Matthews
insists that Sparrow Schools are authentic, and cites a Cold War example that
existed in Kazan, in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan. Given how frequently male
American politicians drop their pants for extramarital — but otherwise benign —
sexual encounters, it’s not much of a stretch to accept the notion of enemy
agents trained to exploit such an insufferable weakness of character.)
The perfectly cast Rampling’s
performance is chilling. The thin-lipped, hawk-eyed Matron is an ideal state
entity, devoted to the higher purpose of her calling: a stoic monster without a
shred of decency. After all, such feelings are weak and counter-productive.
Meanwhile, Nate has been grounded
and blamed for the “failure” of his assignment by back-home CIA colleagues
Trish Forsyth (Sakina Jaffrey) and Marty Gable (Bill Camp). Trouble is, the
valuable mole won’t communicate with anybody but Nate, and so he’s sent back to Budapest.
He almost immediately encounters
Dominika, a newly hatched Sparrow who has been assigned by Vanya — and his
superiors — to target this American, gain his confidence, and somehow uncover
the mole’s identity. The Russians are well aware of this traitor’s existence,
but they’ve no idea who he might be.
Dominika’s approach is clumsy and
obvious; Nate, no fool, immediately perceives this supposedly “accidental”
meeting. Her background is easy to research; she confesses her recent training
and begs to escape — with her mother — to the States. Nate readily accepts.
But is she playing him? Or is he
playing her? Or are they both being played by their respective handlers?
The twists probably are too
numerous to track as they occur, particularly given the wealth of supplementary
characters who further muddy the waters. But have faith in this tight,
meticulously constructed script; it doesn’t disappoint, all the way to a
thoroughly satisfying conclusion.
Edgerton’s rumpled, slightly
boyish enthusiasm — Nate’s emotions are worn on his sleeve — is a nice contrast
to Lawrence’s cool, imperturbable, Dresden doll façade. They spar persuasively,
often circling each other like wary predator and prey (although knowing which
is which is a challenge).
Schoenaerts’ Vanya is a
fascinating study. At first blush, he seems merely a concerned uncle ... but
the more we see of him, and witness his gift for Machiavellian duplicity, the
more subtly sinister Schoenaerts becomes. There’s also something decidedly unwholesome
— a frisson of ookiness — about his affection for Dominika.
Jeremy Irons and Ciarán Hinds are
appropriately ruthless as Vanya’s superiors, Korchnoi and Zahkarov. Sebastian
Hülk is flat-out scary as the vicious Matorin, a veteran Sparrow who eagerly
handles the nastier “wet work” not stipulated by conventional job specs.
Thekla Reuten exudes her own aura
of callous, self-serving duplicity as Marta, Dominika’s new Sparrow colleague
in an apartment they share, without sharing anything. Mary-Louise Parker pops
up as an alcoholic, high-ranking American political aide willing to sell out
her country for ready cash; it’s an oddly larkish role in an otherwise quite
serious narrative, but she makes it work.
Cinematographer Jo Willems exquisitely
frames the architecturally intriguing Budapest locations, although primarily
via establishing shots; most of the action takes place indoors, and often in
confined spaces. James Newton Howard supplies a suspenseful and atmospheric
orchestral score.
Francis Lawrence and editor Alan
Edward Bell take their time. This dense narrative has a lot of ground to cover,
and the 139-minute film can feel slow at times. It also lacks the explosive
bursts of action that characterize Bourne or Bond; this story focuses on the quieter,
stealthier aspects of spycraft ... with occasional dollops of ghastly
brutality.
It’s a deliciously effective
recipe, ideal for those who enjoy thoughtfully intelligent espionage thrillers.
Matthews
has featured Dominika in two more novels, Palace of Treason and The
Kremlin’s Candidate. Might we hope for a new Jennifer Lawrence franchise?
No comments:
Post a Comment