Watched: January 4, 2019

Kegger Rating: 1 Stars

MM Rating: Nope

Kegger’s Review

I just.  I can’t.  I came into this movie expecting… more.  When I saw the trailers for this, I thought, “well, it’s not one of my typical movies, but it has the feel of Atomic Blonde, so why not give it a shot?”

Yeah, I was wrong. 

We were warned ahead of time that some of the content would be graphic, have nudity, and that it wouldn’t necessarily be a sensitive soul’s most comfortable 2 hours 21 minutes. 

They weren’t wrong. 

It’s much gorier than I expected, and after the first couple, didn’t add much to the movie.  There are definitely scenes during which I cringed and looked away, but after the first one or two, I was pretty certain they wouldn’t happen again.  They were done to make a point, and to show that the main character wasn’t going to have to go that far ever again. 

But the worst sin this movie committed? 

It was BORING. 

It’s a spy movie.  It did try to provide intrigue and twists, sort of, but to be honest, I didn’t care.  It didn’t try to be a psychological thriller.  It definitely didn’t try to be an action flick.  It had hints of romance, but not enough chemistry between the characters to matter.

To be fair, I thought Jennifer Lawrence did well in a role that departed from her previous dystopian young adult characters, despite the questionable Russian accent.  But she had nowhere to go with it.  I was confused by the plot throughout, and didn’t care what the end result would be. 

And to be completely honest, even thinking about this now, I’m SO BORED.  So I’m just going to stop writing it. 

Blech. 

MM’s Review

Let’s all celebrate that I made it through one entire review without swearing. 

<pause for celebration>

Now then, what the fuck IMDB?  This was listed as a top movie of 2018?

The plot summary should’ve read, “The creators of this movie saw Atomic Blonde and thought it would be a great idea to make the same movie, except worse and with more gore.  You in?”

This movie has a lot of the pieces of Atomic Blonde.  Both movies have a female protagonist, mysterious intrigue up to the end, violence, and nudity.  These components are all right up my alley. 

Atomic Blonde’s protagonist was interesting and likeable.  Its intrigue kept me invested in the story, attempting to guess the story within the story.  The violence was exciting without being disgusting, and hey, nudity. 

Red Sparrow’s protagonist was an emotional stump with dead eyes.  Its intrigue was oftentimes eye rolling, and other times maddening.  The violence was frequently gross.  It’s hard to mess up boobs, at least.

On the positive side, I thought Jennifer Lawrence did a good job with the Russian accent.  Of course, I’m the world’s worst accent impressionist, but I was able to buy that she was Russian after wondering if she was wearing a wig for the first 20 minutes or so.  Beyond that, I was really unimpressed with the acting range.  For a character meant to be going through an emotional struggle, the most we saw was a brief scene of her stony face with a single tear rolling.  John Rambo showed us more, even if we couldn’t understand him.

Her costars were mostly boring as well, but they weren’t given much to do either.  Our American spy counterpart was slightly more interesting, but only because he made worse decisions than the cheerleader in the first 10 minutes of a horror movie. 

Lastly, a word on the violence.  I grew up with Conan the Barbarian, which spilled literally gallons of red-colored-goo.  I have no problem with a variety of gore, ranging from Evil Dead (and Army of Darkness, obviously) to Zombieland to Dawn of the Dead.  There’s a big difference between these examples, and the so-called torture porn genre.  That’s the difference in the violence between Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow. 

If the movie had been 30 minutes shorter, and they dropped the unnecessary violence, I could’ve gone as far as “It was okay”.  Instead, I’m giving this a Nope out of 5 stars.