Prima ballerina Dominika Egorova faces a bleak and uncertain future after she suffers an injury that ends her career. She soon turns to Sparrow School, a secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young people to use their minds and bodies as weapons. Egorova emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow after completing the sadistic training process. As she comes to terms with her new abilities, Dominika meets a CIA agent who tries to convince her that he is the only person she can Sparrow is not a pleasant movie by any stretch of the imagination. Rather than offering the escapism the spy genre usually provides of glamorous agents and globetrotting escapades, Francis Lawrence’s film is a brutal plunge into a world of sexual assault and degradation. Although it plays by the beats of the spy drama to the point where it feels like the story is devolving into an extended cat-and-mouse game, Red Sparrow is at its most electrifying when it feels like a raw nerve about how power is used and choice is removed. Jennifer Lawrence gives a fearless performance that makes us want to root for her even if we know that the only way to succeed in the world presented is through dominance, control, and Egorova Jennifer Lawrence is a prima ballerina in the Bolshoi until an accident on stage breaks her leg and ends her dancing career. Needing to support herself and her ailing mother Nina Joely Richardson, Dominika turns to her uncle Vanya Matthias Schoenaerts who recruits her for a mission involving a Russian politician. When the mission goes sideways, Dominika is presented with a “choice” die or become a “sparrow”, a subset of the intelligence service meant to use charm and manipulation to extract information. When she completes Sparrow School, Dominika is tasked with seducing CIA agent Nate Nash Joel Edgerton, who knows the identity of a highly placed mole inside the Russian government. But as the mission continues, it’s unclear if Dominika is playing Nate, Vanya, or both.