Red Sparrow - again.

Back in June I talked about the (sort of) spy thriller Red Sparrow. I have now read the book and feel like doing a bit of a comparison.

To no one's surprise, the basic story is the same as the movie. There is a mole in the SVR, Dominika is trained to be a spy, lots of tradecraft, the CIA etc...

However there are lots of differences as well. Take Dominika's training for example. In the book she is fully trained at the SVR academy before she is sent to the sparrow school. The movie really exaggerates the sparrow element for obvious reasons, but it also cheapens Dominika's skills. There is also the fact that she has synesthesia, or the ability to see sound as color. This is why she was so good at dancing, and why she is a human lie detector. The book kind of wears off a bit, treating her condition as more or less aura reading which is a bit much but it is an interesting element, so I didn't mind.

In the movie, a lot of the action takes place in Budapest which is fine, but in the book Nate and Dominika duel in Helsinki which really amused me as I live there. The author, Jason Matthews really did a good job, and described many places accurately. However, I did get a good laugh when a couple of CIA agents are described as knowing the city like the back of their hands, having even mastered the metro... The Helsinki subway isn't like London, Paris or Moscow. The book was published in 2013 and our metro at the time looked like a fork. One long line and a short fork on one end. Not all that impressive to master that... But it was fun to see my hometown through the filter of a spy thriller. Dominika and Nate even eat at a restaurant that I have eaten at a dozen times, at least. In fact, I didn't even know the place still exists, so that was a fun bonus.

The book also deals with espionage within the US, with a highly placed mole, which the movie ignored completely. There are scenes taking place in Athens and Rome that are likewise ignored. I get that it would have ballooned the budget, and it's not like the movie had to have these elements but it would have elevated the movie a great deal.

In a surprising twist, I actually prefer the movie's ending to the one in the book. The novel has a more realistic ending, but I found the movie ending more satisfying.

All in all, the novel really paints a more complete picture of Dominika which makes some scenes in the movie make more sense. It is only natural that a book can go deeper into detail than a movie, but the movie really messed up in so many small ways that they could have fixed if they hadn't been so focused on doing other things instead. In the movie, Dominika has to fend off the lecherous advances of the Russian station chief in Helsinki. In the book, he is a scumbag but he does not dare hit on the niece of the Deputy Director. Things like that I wish the movie could have just handled better.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed Red Sparrow. Jason Matthews writes well and his long experience in the CIA really shows. He manages to create believable and tense surveillance scenarios without loosing the reader in tech-babble. If you like spy novels, read Red Sparrow, it is worth it.

 

Red Sparrow

This week I watched:

Red Sparrow (2018).

Based on the novel of the same name by Jason Matthews who spent thirty-three years at the CIA. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Ciarán Hinds and Jeremy Irons amongst others. It is directed by Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) who directed the Hunger Games movies.

The story in a nutshell is this (Mild Spoilers):

Dominika (Lawrence) is a Prima Ballerina until her career is destroyed. Her mother is an invalid and both her doctors and their apartment are payed for by the ballet company, something they will no longer do now that Dominika can no longer dance. Her uncle Vanya, the deputy director of SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, wants to help her so he sends Dominika on a “simple mission”. After the mission ends dramatically Vanya talks her into joining a sparrow school in return for the apartment and the doctors being payed for.

The sparrow school is an institute that trains spies in the art of seduction, or rather it trains spies for that role. They learn to shoot, pick locks and other spy stuff as well of course, but the manipulation and sex is the main thing. Failure to graduate means a bullet to the head.

Parallel to this is a CIA agent, Nate Nash who has to flee Russia, but his highly placed mole refuses to deal with anyone else so he has to go to Budapest to introduce a new contact to the mole. Dominika, despite her trainers objections is sent to Budapest as well by uncle Vanya to find out the name of the mole from Nash. What follows is a back and forth as Nash tries to make her defect and we wonder whether she wants to or if she is playing him, everything ultimately culminating in a dramatic ending.

Red Sparrow is like a marble floor, very pretty but cold, hard and uncomfortable. It is beautifully shot and the actors are all great, but the movie lacks passion. Add to this the fact that it is two hours and twenty minutes long and it becomes a slog at times. It's not that the movie wastes time, it's just that there are so many scenes that are boring. I appreciate a slow moving spy drama like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but Red Sparrow is too dull at times. There is unsurprisingly quite a lot of nudity and sex in the movie but do not expect titillation, it is all rather unfeeling and tawdry. The action that there is is good but pretty unremarkable and if it wasn't for the ending, I would have been disappointed.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, if you really like spy movies but otherwise not really. Perhaps it is me, but everything that was supposed to be shocking and dramatic, I have seen other movies do better so ultimately it left me with very little. There is nothing really wrong with Red Sparrow and it could be you would like it more, but in that case it has to be your decision to watch it rather than my recommendation.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!