Jennifer Lawrence is all grown up, graduated from the Hunger Games and is now attending Sparrow School. Seducing men and getting everyone killed in the process.
Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is a witness to a crime she shouldn’t have seen, so her only option is to become a Sparrow. A secret Russian intelligence service who specialise in training young agents to use their bodies as weapons. Not the fighty action James Bond kind of way but more in the seductive and manipulative kind of way. They can also pick locks so as far as the training goes that’s about it. Dominika finishes Sparrow school as perhaps the most deadly of all the sparrows. Capable of using her mind and body as a weapon, her mission now is to get information from American CIA agent Joel Edgerton. The plot gives you all the information you need to figure out what exactly is going to happen before it happens. The twists and turns don’t offer much in the way of surprises and at 2 hours and 20 minutes you can bet there’s a lot of them. What it does offer is a good enough espionage movie packed full of violence and torture to peak your interest. At the very least it got my attention, so although the story is dragged out for much too long it manages to pull itself together into an “only gonna watch it once” popcorn flick. Much darker than I expected which is enough to separate it from the usual generic stuff. This is probably the best performance from Jennifer Lawrence in a while, not enough to get the bad taste left behind by Mother! but it’s a start. Recommended if you’ve seen all the Oscar movies and looking for something a little different.
★★★☆☆
Mad For Movie Reviews 