Red Sparrow

Tonight we go see Red Sparrow, a spy thriller which has attracted a lot criticism. This allegedly perverse ‘15’ certificate film has been accused of being both violently and sexually perverse with woman beaten and raped seemingly at will by powerful men.

I must admit that I have been a little surprised by this reaction but then I think I was possibly too busy being annoyed at how they'd made a complete hash out of a decent book which was written by former CIA operative Jason Matthews.

Perhaps I need to re-watch it to see what I missed but I do remember they’d left out the hair brush scene (thankfully). That would have caused even more of a stir.

The story goes like this. Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) was a ballerina at the Bolshoi whose promising dancing career was ended by injury. Sadly her dancing also funded the care for her ailing mother.

Not to worry, her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), who works in Russian intelligence, offers her work to help her get by. It is just a small favour he requires, for her to be the honey in a trap that is to be sprung on a Russian politician. She does the favour and does a rather good job, although it probably goes a little bit further than she would have hoped. Then just as the politician is having his way with her, he is murdered.

Unfortunately she’s now in a bit of a pickle because she’s seen too much. She is told she can either die or start working for Russian intelligence herself. Tough choice that.

So her uncle sends her off to Sparrow School where Matron (Charlotte Rampling) teaches the recruits to use the skills of sexual seduction to get what they want from the enemy.

Once graduated, Dominika is sent to Budapest to meet her target, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who works for the CIA and knows the identity of a Russian mole known as Marble. However, Nash quickly sees through her and the long and short of it is that he persuades her to become a double agent.

I was a fan of the book even though it was at times convoluted and hard to follow, so a simplification was required for it to work as a film and that doesn't happen. In fact what we have here is an even more convoluted plot.

The other problem is where is the seduction? There’s a total lack of chemistry between the two agents. For someone supposedly trained in seduction, Dominika doesn’t pull any tricks out of the locker for him. In the book they have a conflicted relationship due to the nature of their jobs but a relationship nonetheless, here they eventually have a quick bonk. It's not quite the same and where was the swimming race? That was one of my favourite bits.

Instead the script seems to demand that all the Russians must be portrayed as ice men and ice maidens. So Lawrence goes through the entire film wearing only one expression, one of indifference, while Edgerton goes about attempting to be the all American hero.

In fact Lawrence seems hugely miscast in this but then so too are the likes of Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Joely Richardson and Ciaran Hinds. Were there no genuine Russian actors available the weekend that they did the casting?

There is also no back story to the Russian mole which was pivotal to the original story, instead the film just seems overloaded with violence. It’s all deeply disappointing.

This would have made a wonderful independent flick or even a mini series but Hollywood completely wrecked this one.

Burn After Reading

The story to 'Burn After Reading' involves a CIA analyst called Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) who quits his job before he is pushed because of his 'drinking problem'. Thinking his role in intelligence was more important than it actually was, he starts to write his memoirs.

When a CD with it on ends up at Hardbodies gym, he finds himself being blackmailed by two of the gym's employees who believe it to contain sensitive CIA shit, as Brad Pitt puts it. Pitt plays a clueless workout freak called Chad who is egged on by Linda (Frances McDormand). Linda is a wannabe gym bunny, that is once she can get the cash together for the plastic surgery.



When Cox laughs off their bribery attempts, they take the CD to the equally disinterested Russian embassy. The film's a kind of espionage thriller without the espionage, instead the film moves around from one eccentric situation to another in a random manner, as the various story lines are intertwined. As usual, with a Coen's film, you don't get from A to B without going via X, Y and Z.

Brad breaks into Cox's house to try to get more of the 'CIA shit', only Osbourne isn't there but Harry is. George Clooney is Harry, in a role, which seems to send up his own image, a man who just can't stop hopping into bed with different women. For reasons known only to him, he's getting extramarital with Cox's icy wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), a woman with about as much sexual charm as a crocodile. I find Swinton unnerving in this role but then I'm still thinking of her as a boy in Orlando.

When Harry comes across Chad hiding in the wardrobe, he somehow, accidentally, shoots him dead. Harry is already paranoid because someone has been tracking him, he doesn't know it yet but it's a private detective hired by his wife, who, of course, is also cheating on him. Thinking Chad is a spy, he dumps the body in the river.

Harry, traumatised by this and presumably from having to sleep with the reptilian Katie, seeks a bit of light relief and solace in a new bed partner via internet dating. The lucky female turns out to be Linda.



In his spare time between his affairs and a spot of jogging, we see Harry constructing something, which is supposed to be a present for his wife. It turns out to be a mechanical sybian machine. Linda seems very impressed.

Osbourne meanwhile, has to break into his own house with a hatchet because the reptile has started divorce proceedings and has changed the locks. There he comes across someone at his computer. It's Ted (Richard Jenkins), a former Greek Orthodox priest, now boss of Hardbodies, who because he gets a bit of a drool on whenever Linda is around, not that she notices, has decided to help out with the 'CIA shit'. Osbourne's had enough; he shoots Ted and then finishes the job off with the hatchet in the street. So as you can see it's a comedy... well only just and a dark one at that.



Where does all this go? Well, it doesn't go anywhere but brilliantly so. It's a clever film about 'intelligence' colliding with people with no intelligence.

It all finishes a bit suddenly, very Coen like, but unlike a normal Coen's film, we do at least get closure. The loose ends are tidied up and summarised in the offices of CIA, as they try to make sense of the nonsense that has happened.

Two dead bodies and Osbourne himself in a coma after being shot by the real CIA. Harry has been seized trying to board a flight to Venezuela, he fled in terror from Linda when she revealed she was working with Chad, the body in his wardrobe. The CIA understandably very keen for him to catch that flight. Linda, of course, will forget about the whole thing, if they pay for her plastic surgery. Result.

I was a little disappointed at first because the Coen's make some great 'serious' films but their less serious ones have been a bit of a mixed bag and this certainly fits into that category. For anyone else though, this would have been an excellent film.

I reckon they knocked this script up in their lunch hour, had they had a few beers and took the writing on into the evening they could possibly have written the best film of the year but then perhaps they didn't want to knock 'No Country' off the top spot.

It's been criticised for having a lame plot but I think that's the whole point. Perhaps that was the challenge they set themselves. Just how good can we make a movie that doesn't actually go anywhere? Bet they're having a right laugh at the reviews.

Whilst the rest of the movie industry are rehashing the same old stuff or doing pointless remakes and sequels, the Coen's are still coming up with something different. How could anyone object to that?