Even when Dominika is dolled up for seduction, there is darkness to the production design and cinematography. Red Sparrow sells the look of murky espionage. He has a tremendous talent for setting the mood of his story. The pair has multiple raw scenes that don't quite pay off.įrancis Lawrence never fails to bring artistry to his films. He does well by himself as an operative, but they don't mesh well together. The rub is that she doesn't have chemistry with co-star Joel Edgerton. That's the best part of Red Sparrow and well done by Lawrence. The scope of Dominika's arc can be summarized as gaining power over her abusers. I won't go into details, but her treatment in Red Sparrow is pretty heinous. Dominika is an unwilling pawn in a vicious game. Jennifer Lawrence does not hold back in her gritty performance. Red Sparrow needed a tighter script to shore up the layers of complexity. It isn't easy bringing dense novels to the big screen. He goes thick in the weed at points, thus the screen adaptation falters. The screenplay by Justin Haythe attempts to capture the nuances of the source novel. The minutia is necessary to establish character and plot development. At two hours and twenty minutes, the film does drag but there really isn't anything to cut. It works initially, then gets bogged down by the details. Who is betraying whom in a twisted mix of sex and violence.
The film wants to keep you guessing about the characters true intentions. She is assigned to seduce a disgraced CIA agent (Joel Edgerton), who is the sole trusted handler of a long hidden Russian mole. Dominika is thrust into the world of high stakes espionage. Sending her to a top secret spy school, where she is trained by an uncompromising teacher (Charlotte Rampling). He exploits her beauty and natural seductiveness.
A tragic turn of events leads her into the clutches of her spymaster uncle, Ivan (Matthias Schoenarts). Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika Egorova, a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. This back and forth swing keeps the narrative interesting enough to the big reveal. The downbeats are snapped by interspersed scenes of raw brutality. Red Sparrow has a circuitous plot that runs somewhat cold in the middle. It is her fourth collaboration with Director Francis Lawrence ( I Am Legend), who helmed the last three Hunger Games movies. The actress delivers her most sexually charged performance yet, while getting beaten to a pulp throughout. We’ll have to see if The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn is able to follow suit.Jennifer Lawrence takes more than a few lumps in the violent spy thriller, Red Sparrow. That’s also a month in which R-rated movies have done well, with the aforementioned Deadpool crushing the box office at that point in the schedule when it came out in 2016.
For example, while the official rating guidelines aren’t out for Birds of Prey’s DC follow-up, Wonder Woman 1984, that movie is highly likely to stick to a PG-13 rating ( that movie’s frustrations have had more to do with release dates shifting).īirds of Prey Is hitting theaters on February 7, just before the Valentine’s Day holiday. In fact, it also should mean there’s room for all kinds of projects at all kinds of ratings. are feeling more confident about R-rated material right now is good timing for this film. When our own Eric Eisenberg attended the set of the Birds of Prey movie, he learned the flick was going for more of an adult feel and adult-oriented themes, so the fact that DC and Warner Bros. It’s also worth pointing out that DC seems less focused on a shared universe and more focused on simply making interesting one-off movies at this point. So, now Todd Phillips has proven DC can really play in a wide sandbox and still make money, which should lead to more creativity from the studio overall. That Todd Phillips movie was made on a fairly middling budget (low budget by superhero standards), and went on to make more than a billion dollars worldwide, despite its R rating. One major thing happened between that report and this one however: Joker released into theaters. hadn’t settled on a rating for the Harley Quinn and otherwise girl power-centric DC film. Earlier in 2019, it looked as if Warner Bros. The news also comes some months after rumors indicated Birds of Prey – which was originally pitched as an R-rated film – would not be R-rated at all. This History Behind The Latest DC Movie And Its Rating