Red Sparrow - Review Thread

PhantomKnight and frankyt, welcome to the Red Sparrow review thread. It'll just be the three of us in here. Not since Jumanji and The Greatest Showman have I been so thrilled by a movie! Kidding. I haven't seen Greatest Showman yet. I'll get to it, PhantomKnight. I promise. In the meantime, let's discuss Red Sparrow.

Ever since her dominant year in 2012, there's been a major backlash against Jennifer Lawrence. It's the usual "hate what's popular" thing that's so common in our culture. Unfortunately, it has spilled into the box office. Joy, X-Men: Apocalypse, Passengers and mother! were financial disappointments. You could even include the Mockingjay movies. Red Sparrow is not gonna be any different. MoviePass or not, it's gonna flop. That's a shame because Red Sparrow is fucking awesome.

Lawrence stars as a Russian ballerina whose career is cut short by a rival and shortly thereafter is recruited by her incestuous uncle to become a spy. Instead of turning into Lady James Bond, she's shipped off to Whore School for training and later assigned a mission to obtain information from an American spy through sexual intercourse. Yeah. It's that type of movie. 30 years ago this would have been directed by Brian de Palma. And that's the same exact thought the filmmakers had because it's exactly what the movie is: an old-style European thriller with plenty of sex and violence. If you're a fan of those type of movies, you're gonna love this one. The classy European setting. The wardrobe. The music. The acting. It's a perfect recreation of that De Palma/Adrian Lyne/Luc Besson type movie that used to be so popular and often imitated like 25-30 years ago. It's like a mix of The Untouchables, La Femme Nikita and Lolita with a dose of Roman Polanski's Frantic thrown in.