Red Sparrow [DVD]

As a preface, this is not the only JenLaw movie to get unnecessarily slammed by sham reviews. Since The Fappening, people have been on a mission to smear her image. (The personal comments about the president haven't helped.) But throw all that out, look at this film objectively, and you will be pleasantly rewarded with a spy thriller that's cunning, sexy and disturbing all at once.Lawrence plays a Soviet op who is conned into a femme fatale lifestyle of cutthroat operatives when her ballerina career is ruined from an injury. She crosses paths with Edgerton, an agent in the middle of a career SNAFU, as he attempts to redeem his status with the CIA after getting made during his cover. Romance and espionage ensues. The movie is one part Lawrence learning to survive covertly and two parts not trying to turn on her government to aid her mother, friend, and colleagues.The crux of why people are turning this down is the violence and graphic nudity. The violence is no worse than Fight Club and about as disturbing as Black Swan. Those are your benchmarks. As for the sexuality... yes you get to see a penis, some breasts and butt, but at this point you should know Jen is human. Body parts do not make the actor. The acting makes the actor.Lawrence does a pretty convincing job pulling off a Russian dialect, but it's being sociopathic while undercover where she shines. It's a tale of espionage. She starts off scared and green, but over the course of 2 hours she is brutally beautiful in her façade. Edgerton is handsome and sweet. He is excellent as a supporting actor and he only makes Jennifer that much more focal in the story. One of the other standouts here is Rampling, the stoic mission driven school commandant who effortlessly instills guile in her students through psychosexual manipulation. She is equal parts mechanical and overtly invasive in finding sexual quirks. There's another standout performance in Red Sparrow, but I promised I wouldn't spoil the movie in my review.I'm sorry I'm late with this review, but if you plan on Redboxing the movie or catching it before the theatrical run ends, do so! It is not a first date movie, but is definitely sensual, very engrossing and yet another star for both Lawrences' track records. I hope these two continue to work together for years to come.

Red Sparrow is a film adaptation of a trilogy of books. It centers around a Russian woman named Dominika (played by Jennifer Lawrence), a ballerina, who after suffering a career-ending injury is basically forced into a spy training program called the Red Sparrows which trains young Russian women in spycraft.An easy comparison for the film would be to that of The Americans TV series, however, while there are some character parallels between Keri Russell's character on the show to Lawrence's character in the movie since it is set entirely overseas, the better comparison would be to Atomic Blonde, with less over-the-top fight scenes. The movie is basically a spy thriller that has a KGB vs CIA kind of plotline, with the loyalties of pretty much every character called into question at some point. While it is set in modern-day (there are cell phones and laptops), because the spycraft in the novels was old so as to not reveal any modern-day secrets, the movie has a very cold-war 1970s-1980s feel to it. And, some of the technology in the film is very old-school. Those who are old enough to remember 3.5" discs will find it hilarious that they are being used to copy files off of a laptop computer. If any laptop had a 3.5" disc drive, they have not been around in a long time.For those who get the 4k blu-ray, the movie looks and sounds great on the format. The UHD disc has just the movie and the director's commentary. The regular Blu-Ray has all the other extras including previews, deleted scenes, and over an hour's worth of making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes. A decent amount of material for those who like to watch the extras.Overall, the movie is very good. It is well written and acted, and Lawrence definitely takes on a totally different role than those she had played up to that point. The movie is very violent, and there is some nudity with a lot of sexual tones and themes. I have not read the books yet, so I am not sure how the movie compares to the novels, but if you are looking for a good action/drama, it is definitely worth checking out.