Red Sparrow

The foul and flightless Red Sparrow is the seventh feature film from former music video director Francis Lawrence, and the seventh unremarkably bad one to boot. It’s like Lawrence was created in a laboratory by mad scientists who needed to provide content for Crackle. A witless teenage sex fantasy dressed in the solemn tones of a Le Carré-inspired spy movie, Red Sparrow stars Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika Egorova, a Russian ballerina who suffers a career-ending injury during a performance. After taking a shady job and accidentally witnessing a state-sponsored murder, Dominika is given a choice: get murdered, or train to become a specially trained, sexually charged superspy known as a Red Sparrow. The contemporary setting of Red Sparrow at least allows a respite from the tacky CGI that usually overwhelms Francis Lawrence’s films, but it only gives us more time to focus on his clunky storytelling skills and inability to sustain tension.