Red Sparrow

After the completion of The Hunger Games and her part in the X-Men film series concluded, Jennifer Lawrence was undeniably a household name rather than a star on the rise.

For that reason, she clearly had a closer hand in picking which roles she wanted to pursue in this next phase of her career, and she’s only had about a film a year since 2016. Aside from 2015, where she only appeared in two films, Jennifer Lawrence led or was a member of an ensemble in three films a year from 2011 to 2016. After that, she took on a project each year, one of which was Red Sparrow. It’s also one of my favorite films, led by Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika, a prima ballerina in Russia and the niece of a prominent politician as a Deputy Director for the SVR (Russia’s foreign intelligence service). She is renowned for her beauty and ability, to the point that she is eyed by men with money and influence. Still, she is just out of reach because she is unwilling to let herself become the pawn of those around her. However, when it comes to sports and the arts at the level that Dominika is involved, greed and envy are your most significant threats. Much in the vein of Tonya Harding, a man in lust with another beautiful woman goes out of his way to incapacitate Dominika. However, his method was more challenging to identify as intentional. After all, ballerinas are dropped all of the time.

For Dominika, dancing was her escape from a hellish world where connections and influence were the only ways out of the slums. As the prima ballerina of a top-tier ballet company – the Bolshoi – Dominika was afforded an apartment and excellent medical care for her ailing mother, Nina (Joely Richardson). Without her position, these are in jeopardy, and she no longer has a way to make money alone. In America, we often don’t think twice about going to a family member for assistance – often with the understanding that it can be repaid in kind. When Dominika goes to her uncle Ivan Vladimirovich Egorov – referred to as Vanya – for help, he tricks her into participating in an assassination, all under the guise of her being a sexual pawn. This is one of two instances where Dominika is in danger of being raped, and how she handles each scenario is presented as a way of showing how much she has changed. Primarily, this is because the Spy School that Dominika is sent to teaches her that, essentially, sex is power but also just another tool in your arsenal to manipulate those around you.

Because we are not privy to Vanya’s thoughts, and only the actions of those in the film are there for us to go on, it is easy to mistake Vanya’s actions. In truth, Vanya does not view Dominika as disposable, which the Sparrows are referenced as being time and again. Instead, he is rather more insidious. Vanya is implied to have incestuous feelings for Dominika, and he wants her entirely dependent on him – for his ability to protect her and her mother – and he goes through a callously roundabout path to do so. However, the path Vanya laid out for Dominika serves to increase her power, influence, and worth. Whether or not that is the case (his feelings for Dominika) is up for debate. Dominika reads every person and situation around her to effortlessly play them for fiddles, and her decision to kiss her uncle on the lips is meant to be played in that regard.

Dominika’s journey is only one half of the story, though. On the other side, we have the Americans, who are working closely with a mole who is high up in the Russian intelligence service. Their identity is a closely guarded secret, and the man who acts as his contact is desperate to keep it secure at any cost. That man is Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton). When meeting up in a park late at night, Nate and the mole’s meeting is intercepted at the last moment by a pair of police officers. Nate impulsively fires off his gun to draw their attention, alerting the police to the fact that the meeting is more important than they thought it was. A later conversation makes it clear that they probably thought the two men were gay and having an affair – but Nate is paranoid and unwilling to take any chances with the mole’s identity. This impulsivity places him on the opposite end of the spectrum from Dominika, who can come off as brash and impulsive but is actually cold and calculating in every decision she makes.

The Sparrow school takes up about 15 minutes of the film, but it is where Dominika truly begins to come into her own as a person. Having gone through physical therapy to get through the pain of having broken her leg – which ended her career as a ballerina, but not her future as a spy – she grew colder and stronger, to the point where she constantly skirts the edges of the rules under the watchful eye of the Matron (Charlotte Rampling). Vanya provided her the information she needed to learn that her dance partner, Konstantin, dropped her on purpose to hand deliver her position as prima ballerina to her rival, Sonya (Sergei Polunin and Nicole O’Neill, respectively), which led to her giving them more than a few reasons to remember her by. In the middle of her training, another recruit attempts to rape her in the showers for correctly answering a question he failed on. For all his bravado, Nikolai (Makar Zaporozhskiy) is a sniveling coward who is afraid of a woman with even a little bit of power over him. The Matron views her assault on Nikolai as a problem because she damaged his beauty, which she saw as far more critical than Dominika’s honor. Beauty is their most vital tool as a Raven and a Sparrow, and Dominika took that from them and him with relish. Yet, the Matron quickly points out that Dominika has much potential, and the General in the room sees something more than anybody else.

Red Sparrow has a robust supporting cast to enrich its world and story. Stephanie Boucher (Mary Louise Parker) is the aide to a senator and a mole for Russia that another sparrow, Marta (Thekla Reuten), has been cultivating while stationed in Budapest. Marta and Dominika work under Maxim Volontov (Douglas Hodge) – since she doesn’t inform her of her movements as she is supposed to. He also seems willing to try and get Dominika to show her skills as a Sparrow. She is not amused. When she didn’t reciprocate his advances, he sent a damaging report back to Moscow, prompting Dominika to take the situation into her own hands so that he is under her thumb. That she then uses his reaction to her provocation to further her own agenda is simply proof of her ability to turn any situation to her advantage.

Trish Forsyth (Sakina Jaffrey) is a Station Chief who works with Nate during his tenure in Budapest, alongside his other superiors, Simon Benford (Hugh Quarshie) and Marty Gable (Bill Camp), all of whom have been trying to reestablish contact with their mole in SVR for months. They spend much of the film trying to convince Nate not to further involve himself with Dominika, whom they all accurately peg as a spy – one who specializes in using sex to manipulate her target. Nate, though, ignores their warnings and dives head-first into trying to turn her to their side. To… save her, it seems.

Dominika, however, utilizes Marta’s mark to her advantage when the time comes. Her manipulation of Marta goes one step further, leading to an expected outcome.

The relationship between Dominika and Nate is also one of the central points of Red Sparrow. Questions abound over which of the two is using the other, and it seems that Dominika and Nate let one another in just enough to keep them at arm’s length – as if they were on a leash. Yet, by the end of the film, the answer is definitive, and upon rewatching Red Sparrow, it becomes clear that there could never be another option. She can read Nate to the point that she determines which hair color would better suit his preferences – all so that she can infiltrate his life. Nate is aware of who she is because she appears one day and is constantly in his vicinity. She even uses her own name on a document they can get, all so that he will follow the breadcrumbs she is laying out. Still, the film is coy and a smokescreen to hide the real twist.

On the Russian side, we have General Vladimir Andreievich Korchnoi (Jeremy Strong), who was first introduced when Vanya is trying to get Dominika saved from being killed as a witness to the death of Dimitri Ustinov (Kristof Konrad), the Russian Gangster that Vanya sent Dominika to seduce and ended up garroted while he was attempting to rape her. He is the one who ultimately gives Vanya the option of sending Dominika to State School 4. He next appears during the aftermath of Dominika and Nikolai’s altercation, chastising her for depriving Russia of Nikolai as an asset. He speaks with her alone, and her answers cause him to give Dominika a chance to prove her worth – and he sends her to Budapest.

Colonel Zakharov (Ciarán Hinds) is another major player on the Russian side, as the Director of the SVR, and the one most concerned with the fact that they have a mole in their midst. Sergei Matorin (Sebastian Hülk) is a high-ranking operative and assassin for the Russians, who is sent to dispatch Ustinov late into the first act when Dominika unintentionally creates an opening for them. Matorin acts as a sort of boogeyman throughout Red Sparrow. His allegiance is to the SVR, but we are never given the full extent of any orders he might have been given.

Budapest is central to the plot of Red Sparrow. It’s where Nate is sent to try to reestablish ties with Marble, the mole in the SVR, and where Dominika is sent to sniff out who that mole is. It is here where all the plot lines converge, throwing countless plans and agendas meticulously created into chaos, and Dominika is at the center of it all. It’s one of the oldest cities still standing, and its beauty starkly contrasts the cold and merciless story unfolding across its streets.

Desire is the central theme of Red Sparrow. What do you desire is a question that is asked quietly and aloud throughout the film. One of Dominika’s most remarkable abilities is figuring out what each character desires. Frequently, she can pinpoint a person’s desire despite their lack of awareness and uses that to her advantage. At every opportunity, Dominika seizes it with both hands, her nails dug in because she is fighting for her freedom and security. She is not just looking to survive. Dominika wants to thrive.