Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Red Sparrow

This is topic Red Sparrow in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 03-16-2018, 04:12 PM:

This movie is based on a book that I read a couple of months ago.

The book is pretty good; the movie is very compressed compared to the book. Most of the events are presented differently than they are in the book, including the ending, so the end actually caught me by surprise. What you end up with is a movie with the same characters as the book and a story that is, at best, somewhat similar.

The movie is not bad on its own merits, though. I might have liked it better if I hadn't read the book so recently.

The movie consists of a lot of people more-or-less just talking interspersed with periods of really brutal and graphic violence. There isn't a lot of what I would call "action", i.e. interestingly choreographed fights or chase scenes. Basically, everyone is either talking to someone or slaughtering someone and there isn't much else in between.

I thought the atmosphere could have been brought out a bit more in some of the scenes. The stalking scene in the shower and steam room, for example, the killing came sooner than it needed to -- there was a tension to be built up that didn't really get done. Same with some of the scenes in fancy restaurants and the hand-over of the disks by the traitor in the hotel room; everyone got down to business too fast and something was lost by a lack of build-up.

I can understand why it was done that way. Red Sparrow is a long movie, there's a lot of story to get through, and they probably didn't want to make it even longer.

Overall, this is worth seeing if you like spy thrillers but you might like it better if you haven't read the book.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 03-30-2018, 01:10 PM:

I kinda thought it was TOO long, was nodding on and off midway through - interesting movie, I liked it but wasn't that wow'ed by it - hope they film the other two books.