RED SPARROW (2018)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Francis Lawrence

SCREENWRITER: Justin Haythe

FILM STARS: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Jason Matthews

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2018

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2013

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Spy Thriller

WORDS: The film is a long spy thriller with dollops of realism, if not visually then in the storytelling detail.

Ultimately it’s another in a long line of well written spy thrillers that are quickly forgotten, or confused and misremembered with other films.

Jennifer Lawrence was cast as the current era Russian spy (Dominika) who indulges in Sexpionage (the involvement of sexual activity (or the possibility of sexual activity), intimacy, romance, or seduction in espionage. Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as a distraction, incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexpionage).

I don’t know how accurate or prolific the use of Sexpionage is, or if the spies look like Jennifer Lawrence, but if it was and they did, it would be worth looking into for employment …err, despite the chance of death.

Sure, people use sex in the real world to gain leverage, benefits, and all sorts of things but used here it is akin to State paid prostitution, which would meet with all sorts of red flags in the workplace health and safety and work discrimination areas, in the west. I can’t see feminist policy makers promoting the use of sex to gain advantage, no matter how prevalent it is in the real world. Officially, in the west, I suspect the best you could hope for is for management to turn a blind eye. Luckily (for the filmmakers if for no one else) Russia has no such policies or legal concerns regarding the use of sex by female (and male) spies. (I note, in the Soviet Union, female agents assigned to use such tactics were referred to as “swallows”, while male agents were known as “ravens”).

Most of these spies were honey pot spies used to entrap their targets with a view to blackmailing (or extorting) them, not spies used for killing or assassinations. But staying within the motion picture standards when it comes to age ratings doesnt always make for exciting plot lines. You get get away with more violence on screen than sex. So, the female spies became increasingly assassin oriented in films …. and the genre still seems to be paying off – Anna (2019),  Ava (2020), Kate (2021), In from the Cold (2022), The 355 (2022), Ballerina (2025) all have female protagonists kicking arse in cartoonish (at worst), unlikely (at best) ways. Sure, women can kill people but shagging some mid level public servant to extract information out of him is one thing, taking out targets, alone, with military precision, whilst dispatching heavy built security and military types is something different altogether.

A history detour, which provides some background:

Yakov Agranov, deputy of the NKVD, known as one of main organizers of Soviet political repressions and Stalinist show trials in 1920s and 1930s, was responsible for sex spy operations among creative-class intelligentsia. He used Bolshoi ballerinas, as well as cinema and theater actresses. Agranov created a school named the Lenin Technical School (Ленинская техническая школа). The school was opened in 1931 by Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who was the head of the Joint State Political Directorate. According to legend, Richard Sorge and Nikolai Kuznetsov studied at a Moscow Sexpionage school.

Kazan, Tatarstan Sexpionage school – According to former CIA officer Jason Matthews, the Soviet Union had a Sexpionage school called “State School 4” in Kazan, Tatarstan, southeast of Moscow, on the banks of the Volga river. The school trained female agents to be “swallows”. This school was depicted in Matthews’ 2013 novel Red Sparrow. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexpionage

Apparently Russia now uses private contractors in the Sexpionage world instead of the graduates from State run schools. I’m not sure what that says about education in the constant argument between private and State education.

Author Jason Matthews was a former CIA officer (from the 1980s through to the 2010s) so he injects enough detail into the thriller like proceedings to give the illusion of realism. Perfect for Hollywood. real but not too real. It was bound to be made into a film … in fact before the book was published, Matthews sold the movie rights for Red Sparrow, for a seven-figure amount. There is also a nice quirky touch included.  Each chapter in the book, as well as its two sequels, includes a recipe for a food or cocktail mentioned in the preceding chapter. I assume this is to to add a sensory, humanizing layer to the story and to provide some local flavour (sic) to the places the characters travel to..

The film adaptation of Red Sparrow condenses the novel into a darker, more visceral thriller. The movie omits the book “synesthesia” subplot (reading people as colored auras), changes the setting of key operations, and completely reworks the climax to alter who the ultimate double agent. The Dominika of the book is idealistic, patriotic, and possesses synesthesia, whereas in the film she lacks these supernatural/sensory abilities and is portrayed as far more self-serving, primarily motivated by keeping her ailing mother safe from being used as leverage. As you would expect the book focuses heavily on tradecraft, the mechanics of espionage, and the geopolitical maneuvering of the two countries whereas the film relies much more on graphic, extreme violence (e.g., the torture sequences and the skinning scene) to establish a grim, shocking atmosphere. Likewise, as you would expect in 2018 the movie also alters the gender, age, and roles of several supporting spy characters to make the cast more diverse.

Lawrence is supported well but has to carry the film, and she does. She was riding high at the time having starred in the successful Silver Linings Playbook (2012), Hunger Game films (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)), Joy (2015),  X-Men: Apocalypse(2016), and Passengers (2016). She was probably largely responsible for pulling the difficult and not very good film, Mother! (2017), into a slight profit. The role here is not a stretch – acting cold and ruthless usually means acting like a robot.  She does that. She is also convincing as a Russian. Screenwriter Justin Haythe only has to move the book to the screen, keeping the drama and obligatory twists and turns intact and Austrian born director Francis Lawrence just had to keep it moving which he does I Am Legend (2007) and all three Hunger Games films with Lawrence.

It’s not rocket science. It’s paint by number but like well done kit art / hobby art its nice to look at but you know it’s not real and you know you are not getting anything new.

The film looks good. Like most spy thrillers it is filmed in Europe (even if it is not always in the country of action). Here … Budapest (stands in for Budapest) and Dunaújváros in Hungary and Bratislava, Slovakia and Vienna, Austria stand in for Russia and other places.

But, the big problem is we have seen many sexy female spies in the past (Salt (2010), Colombiana (2011), Hanna(2011)), and even cold killer ones like here (La Femme Nikita (1990), Atomic Blonde (2017)). Deja vu hangs over the film. Worse still, it’s way to long … the more serious a spy thriller tries to be the longer they are, generally. It takes time to create the right mood for all the moral questions they like to think they ask, but don’t.

The book was a best seller the film did well (budget $69 million, box office $151.6 million).

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