‘Red Sparrow’ (2018)- Francis Lawrence.

Director, Francis Lawrence’s gorgeously giddy, sensuously slick, singularly vapid ‘Red Sparrow’ (2018) is a spectacularly scurrilous Euro-spy yarn given some additionally lissom-limbed lustre by having a luminous, bodaciously ass-kicking, lock-picking, pulse-quickening, Jennifer Lawrence playing the glamorously glacial ex-ballerina, Dominika Egova, turned exquisitely dangerous espionage smut-siren, who provocatively conceals her devastating set of ‘special skills’ beneath a snug-fitting, décolletage-popping, head-turning bikini! ‘Red Sparrow’ is a glum, frost-bitten, high-gloss, John Le Carré-styled cold war thriller about double-dealing, double-whiskey downing double-agents, blithely globe-trotting their bravura, bullet-dodging machinations across some breathlessly cinematic European vistas. These beautifully austere, sublimely evocative exteriors being headily contrasted with some intimately lurid interior clinches worthy of smut-master, Zalman ‘Wild Orchid’ King himself! 

I have an absurdly zealous passion for bellicose Euro-thrillers, and ‘Red Sparrow’ dutifully delivers all the requisite thrill-spilling, skull-shattering, neck-garrotting spectacle this blissfully bloody, back-stabbing genre requires, but, for all that greasy hyperbole, if one scrutinizes the burnished actioner a little too closely, the frequently facile, over-burnished allure soon dissipates, thereby exposing its hollowed out, emotionally barren core. Taken as a grimly entertaining, adrenalized rush of prettified pulp fiction it is certainly not without value, and, perhaps, ardent fans of Gallic action stylist, Oliver Megaton’s no less sleek and garishly adorned ‘Red Siren’ should find their fitfully fluttering hearts soaring in amorous response to Ms. Lawrence’s dazzling crimson plumage! If I might just reiterate, while Red Sparrow’s narrative aspirations aren’t especially lofty, this doesn’t hinder its awesome impetus as being one of the more silkily streamlined, tantalizingly sexy super-spy action-fests in recent memory, and I remain mustard keen to witness a second bloody bout from our sultry, blonde-haired, sleazoid-slaying seductress!