Red Sparrow – La Femme Nikita (in Russia)

I guess there comes a time in everyone’s life (or at least the life of an avid film fan!) where you begin to judge films based on whether they’re even slightly original or not. ‘Red Sparrow’ is a prime example of – technically – quite a good film and worth a watch.  However, from the point of view where I’ve seen many various versions of the tale regarding someone who gets forcibly recruited by a secret Government organisation and then made to do X, Y or Z until they can finally break free, there’s nothing new here.

Jennifer Lawrence does a convincing Russian accent as the lead character, but I felt she was kind of unlikeable and her sick mother was just thrown into the story as a way of trying to show her character’s ‘softer side.’ So, in between killing men who seem to want to attack her on site, she also strikes up a relationship with Joel Edgerton’s character.  Only they don’t really meet on screen until about a third of the way through, so there’s little time for them to establish chemistry before they’re thrown together as lovers.  Then, seemingly by way of counterbalance, some of the other characters we meet early on are basically cast aside and left under-developed.

Somewhere in here is a good film, but it feels a bit all over the place in terms of story and pacing.  It tries to be dark and gritty during the opening third, then abandons that feel and flits from being ‘La Femme Nikita’ to something more like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ in other places.  I know it goes for the ‘dark and gritty’ tone, but it ends up taking itself way too seriously.  The film is littered with long, lingering shots of J-Law walking slowly towards camera at the beginning of every scene while she stares off into the middle distance beyond the camera.  It might have helped the film’s overall feel if it was a little lighter here and there with some more ‘fun’ elements thrown in, making it more of an action movie.  Just my take.

Maybe if you haven’t seen a film like this before you’ll like it more than I did.  I just got a real sense of de ja vu in terms of cinema where it wasn’t bad, just wasn’t original enough to be any good and having Jennifer Lawrence as the lead and a few naughty scenes weren’t enough to elevate a stale storyline to anything more than an average film.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back