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movie review - Red Sparrow

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is the tale of a girl from a rough background who is simultaneously a ballerina and maybe also a prostitute or any way seems to be living with a gangster. Anyway, she becomes a spy for the Soviet regime, following the well-worn trope of the lethal female Easter Bloc spy who of course will use sex as a weapon. Will she survive the rigors of her training? How will she function as a spy?

It's clever and it's beautifully made for the most part, though you have to suspend your disbelief from something well past the orbit of the moon because she pulls through all manner of dangers that should have been the end of her: internal ministry politics, bullets, falls, psychological and physical torture, sexual violence, you name it. I have to say, however, I didn't buy her induction into this weird department of the Soviet spy ministry. I didn't buy the department itself, it had no familiarity to it as an agency. And I didn't buy the supposed conflict between the two superpowers of the day. It had a Bond like tenuous grasp on how things really would work.

Not recommended.