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Red Sparrow

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This article is about the film. For the novel on which the film is based, see Red Sparrow (novel). For other uses, see Red sparrow.
Red Sparrow
Theatrical release poster
Directed byFrancis Lawrence
Screenplay byJustin Haythe
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyJo Willems
Edited byAlan Edward Bell
Music byJames Newton Howard
Production
companies
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • February 15, 2018 (2018-02-15) (Newseum)
  • March 2, 2018 (2018-03-02) (United States)
Running time
140 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$69 million[2]
Box office$120.6 million[2]

Red Sparrow is a 2018 American spy thriller film directed by Francis Lawrence and written by Justin Haythe, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Jason Matthews. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeremy Irons. It tells the story of a Russian intelligence officer who is sent to make contact with a CIA agent in the hope of discovering the identity of a mole.

Red Sparrow premiered at Newseum in Washington, D.C. on February 15, 2018, and was released in the United States on March 2, 2018.[3] The film has grossed $120 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, who described it as having "more style than substance", criticizing the film's length and over-reliance on graphic violence and sex, but praising Jennifer Lawrence's performance.[4][5]

Plot

In modern-day Russia, Dominika Egorova is a famed Russian ballerina who supports her ill mother. Following a career-ending injury, Dominika is approached by her uncle, Ivan, who works in Russian intelligence. She is tasked with seducing Dimitry Ustinov, a Russian politician, in exchange for her mother's continued medical care. As Ustinov rapes her, he is killed by Simionov, a Russian operative authorized by Ivan. Ivan offers Dominika a choice to begin working for Russian intelligence, or be executed so there are no witnesses.

Nate Nash is a CIA operative working in Moscow. While meeting with an asset in Gorky Park, they are confronted by the police. Nash creates a diversion to ensure his asset, a mole in Russian ranks code-named Marble, escapes detection. Nash is reassigned back to the U.S. but Nash insists that he is the only individual whom Marble will work with, and is assigned to Budapest (as he cannot go back to Russia) to regain contact with Marble.

Dominika is sent to train to become a Russian operative, known as a 'Sparrow', capable of seducing her targets. Dominika excels in her training, despite some friction with her trainers, and she is assigned to Budapest. Russian SVR has been tracking Nash, and hopes to find out the identity of Marble. Dominika's assignment is to gain the trust of Nash, and reveal his contact.

Upon her arrival in Budapest, Dominika lives with Marta, another Sparrow. Dominika quickly makes contact with Nash, who correctly determines that she is a Russian intelligence operative. Dominika reveals her true identity to him, as well as her motive to find out Marble's identity. While Marta is out, Dominika inspects her room, and realizes that she is working to gather information from Stephanie Boucher, a chief of staff for a U.S. Senator. Dominika realizes she needs more time, and claims to the ambassador that she is helping in Marta's effort to gather information from Boucher. Upon returning home one day, Dominika finds Marta brutally tortured and murdered. Simionov reveals that he carried out the murder as a warning not to betray Russian secrets.

Dominika offers to work for Nash as a double agent. She carries out Marta's assignment to meet Boucher, and covertly exchanges the supplied information for CIA-supplied floppy disks. On leaving the meeting place, Boucher sees American agents and is spooked. She unintentionally steps into traffic and is killed. Russian agents observing Boucher realize that the mission had been compromised by Dominika. They require her to return to Moscow. She is tortured and interrogated for days. She convinces Ivan that she is now credible to the Americans, as she has been tortured by her own people and did not reveal information. Dominika returns to Budapest, and informs Nash that she wishes to defect with her mother to America.

After spending the night with Nash, Dominika awakes to find him being tortured by Simionov, who is attempting to discover the identity of Marble. She initially helps Simionov torture Nash, but turns on him and kills him. She wakes in a hospital where General Vladimir Korchnoi reveals that he is Marble. He explains that he was initially patriotic, but grew to feel that Russia was corrupt. He fears he will be caught soon, and instead of dying in vain, instructs Dominika to reveal his identity to Ivan. She could then replace him as a mole and further their work by passing information to the CIA. But when Dominika contacts her superiors to reveal the identity of the mole, she frames her uncle Ivan rather than betray Korchnoi. Ivan is killed by the Russian side, and Dominika is congratulated for her work by her Russian superiors.

Back home in Russia, Dominika lives with her mother, and receives a phone call from an unknown person who plays Grieg’s piano concerto that she had listened to during her affair with Nash.

Cast

Production

Development

After Jason Matthews' book Red Sparrow was published in 2013, 20th Century Fox purchased the film rights, and signed Francis Lawrence to direct.[11] Matthews said the idea of "sparrows" and "sparrow school" was based on State School 4 in the Soviet Union, but Russian "sexpionage" is now done by women contracted outside of spy agencies.[12][13] The Russian concept of kompromat was also influential.[12] Lawrence worked on adapting Matthews' book in 2015, although he said he had reservations about the timeliness of a Cold War story.[14]

Screenwriter Justin Haythe reduced the number of narrators and shifting perspectives in the novel, concentrating on Dominika.[11] Russian President Vladimir Putin, who appears in the novel, was also cut from the adaptation, due to Lawrence believing it would be a distraction to have an actor play the highly public figure.[15]

Matthews, who said he based his book on his experiences in the CIA,[16] was also hired as technical advisor, to supervise the accuracy of the depiction of espionage.[11] He had the Gorky Park scene rewritten to depict espionage methods more accurately.[13]

Casting

Francis Lawrence presented the screenplay to Jennifer Lawrence, who accepted the part.[17] Jennifer stated she admired the character and Francis' direction, with her sole point of hesitation being the "really sexual" nature of the character.[14] Francis Lawrence then met with her personally to discuss the nude scenes.[16] In 2014, Jennifer had private nude photos stolen in the iCloud leaks. However, Jennifer drew a distinction between the film and the leak based on her consent to the film, as opposed to the leak.[17] Jennifer explained: "The insecurity and fear of being judged for getting nude, what I went through, should that dictate decisions I make for the rest of my life?"[16][18]

Matthews advised Jennifer Lawrence that double agents from Russia feel "a dread of discovery, a dread of being arrested, a dread of going to prison".[13] Lawrence also studied ballet for four months.[19] Kurt Froman of the New York City Ballet coached her, as she had never studied ballet before, and spent four hours with her each day for five days per week.[20]

As a former member of the CIA, Matthews coached actor Joel Edgerton. Edgerton said it was difficult to consider having "an interpersonal dating-style relationship ... [and] That fact that you would have to report any of those kinds of interactions with your bosses".[16] Matthias Schoenaerts and Jeremy Irons joined the cast by December 2016.[6]

Filming

Festetics Mansion in Dég

Principal photography started in Budapest and Dunaújváros in Hungary on January 5, 2017.[21][22][23] Other filming locations include Festetics Mansion in Dég, Hungary;[24] Bratislava, Slovakia;[25] and Vienna, Austria.[26] On May 3, 2017, Jennifer Lawrence was spotted shooting some scenes at London's Heathrow Airport.[27]

Post-production

In post-production, Francis offered Jennifer Lawrence the opportunity to view a cut of the film ahead of the studio and producers, so that she might request the deletion of any nude or sexual scenes. She declined to request any deletions.[17] However, the film was edited for the United Kingdom release to remove a violent sequence and secure a 15 certificate from the British Board of Film Classification.[28]

For the soundtrack, the 1868 Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg is used.[29] James Newton Howard wrote the score recorded in October 2017, citing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem and Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird as influences, having commenced work before seeing a cut of the film.[30]

2. Adagio
Grieg's piano concerto
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Release

Red Sparrow was originally scheduled to be released by 20th Century Fox on November 10, 2017, but in April 2017 the release date was pushed back from its original release date of November 10, 2017 to March 2, 2018, to take over from Murder on the Orient Express.[31][3] The first trailer for the film was released on September 14, 2017.[32] It premiered on February 15, 2018 at Newseum.[33] The U.S. release followed on March 2.[20]

Overseas, Red Sparrow screened at FEST in Belgrade on February 28, 2018.[34] It was released in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2018.[15][35]

Reception

Box office

As of March 26, 2018, Red Sparrow has grossed $44.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $76.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $120.6 million, against a production budget of $69 million.[2]

In the United States and Canada, Red Sparrow was released alongside Death Wish, and was projected to gross $20–24 million from 3,056 theaters in its opening weekend.[36] It made $6 million on its first day (including $1.2 million from Thursday night previews) and $17 million over the weekend, finishing second behind holdover Black Panther. Deadline.com noted the opening was underwhelming given the film's $69 million budget, and that Lawrence's salary of $15–20 million was too much to spend on just one star.[37]

Critical response

Despite the film receiving mixed reviews, Jennifer Lawrence's performance was praised by critics.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 47% based on 234 reviews, and an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Red Sparrow aims for smart, sexy spy thriller territory, but Jennifer Lawrence's committed performance isn't enough to compensate for thin characters and a convoluted story."[38] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[37]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film to be "preposterously entertaining" and credited its success to Lawrence's performance, writing that "like all great stars, [Lawrence] can slip into a role as if sliding into another skin, unburdened by hesitation or self-doubt".[40] IndieWire's Eric Kohn, who graded the film a B, noted the performances of Lawrence and Rampling, stating that "the considerable talent on display is [the film's] constant saving grace". However, he also found that the film "doesn't know when to stop, sagging into bland torture scenes and an underwhelming final showdown".[41] Giving the film a B-, The A.V. Club's Jesse Hassenger noted the film's methodical nature, with its minimal action and character exploration, and remarked that Francis Lawrence "brings to this material what he brought to The Hunger Games: a sense of style that feels constrained by obligations to hit a certain number of plot points."[42]

Alonso Duralde of TheWrap criticized the derivative story and the lack of chemistry between Lawrence and Edgerton, calling the film "neither intelligent enough to be involving nor fun enough to be trashy."[43] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 out of 4 stars and said, "Half of the Red Sparrow audience will spend at least part of the running time fighting off memories of Salt and Atomic Blonde and the Black Widow storyline from The Avengers. The other half, meantime, will wonder when spy movies became quite so punishing."[44] Simran Hans of The Guardian found the film to be sexist, writing that "it busies itself with the grim surface pleasures of ogling its central character as she is degraded in every way possible".[45]

References

  1. ^ "RED SPARROW (2018)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c "Red Sparrow (2018)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  3. ^ a b Lang, Brent (April 22, 2017). "Steven Spielberg Pentagon Papers Drama Gets 2017 Oscar Season Release". Variety. Retrieved April 22, 2017.
  4. ^ Waters, Michael (February 16, 2018). "'Red Sparrow': What the Critics Are Saying". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  5. ^ "'Red Sparrow' Review Roundup: What the Critics Are Saying". Variety. February 16, 2018. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  6. ^ a b c d e Ford, Rebecca (December 6, 2016). "Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons Joining Jennifer Lawrence in 'Red Sparrow' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter.
  7. ^ a b Nepales, Ruben V. "'Red Sparrow' director talks about working with Jennifer Lawrence again".
  8. ^ "Oscar-nominated actress Charlotte Rampling talks about growing up in East Anglia". Eastern Daily Press. 12 March 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2017.
  9. ^ N'Duka, Amanda (February 27, 2017). "Sakina Jaffrey Cast In Fox's 'Red Sparrow'; Bill Marchant Joins Sci-Fi Indie 'Volition'". Deadline.com. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  10. ^ "Jennifer Lawrence filming spy thriller "Red Sparrow" in Budapest". PanARMENIAN.Net. Retrieved 2017-08-23.
  11. ^ a b c Rankin, Seija (February 25, 2018). "Inside Red Sparrow: From best-selling spy novel to Jennifer Lawrence blockbuster". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  12. ^ a b David, Javier E. (March 3, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' used to be an actual phenomenon during the Cold War, and in some ways still is: Author". CNBC. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  13. ^ a b c Kelly, Mary Louise (March 5, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' Author And Ex-CIA Agent Says New Movie Gets Spy Life Right". NPR. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  14. ^ a b Rottenberg, Josh (February 25, 2018). "Sex, violence and a Russian accent: Jennifer Lawrence takes another big risk with 'Red Sparrow'". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  15. ^ a b Lazarus, Susanna (March 1, 2018). "Red Sparrow director on Jennifer Lawrence's racy scenes and why he cut Vladimir Putin from the movie". Radio Times. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  16. ^ a b c d Harrison, Alexa (February 27, 2018). "Jennifer Lawrence's 'Red Sparrow' Nude Scenes Made Her More Secure in Wake of Photo Hack". Variety. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  17. ^ a b c Erbland, Kate (February 28, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' Director Francis Lawrence Gave Star Jennifer Lawrence Control Over Spy Thriller's Nude Scenes". IndieWire. Retrieved March 4, 2018.
  18. ^ Hooton, Christopher (February 28, 2018). "Jennifer Lawrence says Red Sparrow naked scenes helped her get past photo hack". The Independent. Retrieved March 4, 2018.
  19. ^ Holmes, Adam (February 2018). "One Hard Thing About Filming Red Sparrow, According To Jennifer Lawrence". Cinema Blend. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  20. ^ a b Wong, Curtis M. (March 5, 2018). "Meet The Man Who Helped Make Jennifer Lawrence A 'Red Sparrow' Ballerina". The Huffington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  21. ^ "Budapest utcáján fotózták le Jennifer Lawrence-t". 24.hu (in Hungarian). January 7, 2017. Retrieved January 12, 2017.
  22. ^ "Itt vannak az első budapesti fotók Jennifer Lawrence-ről". cosmopolitan.hu (in Hungarian). January 8, 2017. Retrieved January 12, 2017.
  23. ^ "Jennifer Lawrence Arrived in Budapest". Daily News Hungary. January 5, 2017. Retrieved January 12, 2017.
  24. ^ "Amerikai filmet forgatnak Dégen: Jennifer Lawrence is felbukkanhat a faluban" (HTML) (in Hungarian). Fejér Megyei Hírlap. February 1, 2017. Retrieved December 10, 2017.
  25. ^ "Off-duty Jennifer Lawrence transforms into a sexy Russian spy with a platinum wig and blunt bangs as she films Red Sparrow in Slovakia". Daily Mail. April 26, 2017. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
  26. ^ "Jennifer Lawrence films Red Sparrow scenes in Vienna". Daily Mail. April 29, 2017. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
  27. ^ "Jennifer Lawrence shoots Red Sparrow at London's Heathrow". WStale. Retrieved July 21, 2017.
  28. ^ Warner, Sam (February 15, 2018). "Jennifer Lawrence's new movie had to be re-edited to avoid an 18 certificate for 'strong sadistic violence'". Digital Spy. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  29. ^ Reader, Steve (March 2, 2018). "FILM REVIEW: A Dancer Transformed Into A 'Red Sparrow'". Northwest Public Radio. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
  30. ^ Zemler, Emily (March 2, 2018). "Making music for Russian spies: 'Hunger Games' team reunites for 'Red Sparrow'". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
  31. ^ Donnelly, Matt (April 22, 2017). "Jennifer Lawrence Spy Thriller 'Red Sparrow' Pushed to 2018". The Wrap. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  32. ^ Keene, Allison (September 14, 2017). "First 'Red Sparrow' Trailer Reveals Jennifer Lawrence as a Russian Spy". Collider.com. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  33. ^ Clarke, Brent N. (February 15, 2018). "DC Premiere of 'Red Sparrow'". The Oklahoman. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  34. ^ Galic, David (February 23, 2018). "Belgrade's International Film Festival Kicks Off". Balkan Insight. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  35. ^ Parkin, Simon (March 1, 2018). "Video preview: films not to miss at the cinema in March 2018". Eastern Daily Press. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  36. ^ Anthony D'Alessandro (February 28, 2018). "'Black Panther' To Wave Off 'Death Wish' & Eat 'Red Sparrow' – Box Office Preview". Deadline.com. Retrieved February 28, 2018.
  37. ^ a b Anthony D'Alessandro (March 4, 2018). "'Black Panther' Busts Past Half Billion; 'Red Sparrow' Flies Low With $17M – Sunday AM B.O. Update". Deadline.com. Retrieved March 4, 2018.
  38. ^ "Red Sparrow (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
  39. ^ "Red Sparrow Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  40. ^ Dargis, Manohla (March 1, 2018). "Review: 'Red Sparrow' Has Spies, Lies and Dirty Dancing". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
  41. ^ Kohn, Eric (February 16, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' Review: Jennifer Lawrence Is a Badass Russian Spy Who Uses Her Sexuality Like a Weapon in Solid Thriller". IndieWire. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  42. ^ Hassenger, Jesse (February 16, 2018). "Jennifer Lawrence tweaks her action-heroine steeliness in the half-trashy Red Sparrow". The AV Club. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  43. ^ Durande, Alonso (February 16, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' Film Review: Jennifer Lawrence Swans About in Silly Spy Tale". TheWrap. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  44. ^ Phillips, Michael (February 27, 2018). "'Red Sparrow' review: Jennifer Lawrence dances with espionage". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  45. ^ Hans, Simran (March 4, 2018). "Red Sparrow review – sexist spy thriller". The Guardian. Retrieved March 4, 2018.
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