Director: Francis Lawrence
Screenplay: Eric Singer
Based on novel by Jason Matthews
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Ciarán Hinds, Mary-Louise Parker
Music: James Newton Howard
Cinematography: Jo Willems
Editing: Alan Edward Bell
Runtime: 139 min
Rating: R (for strong violence, torture, sexual content, language and some graphic nudity)
A good entry in Hollywood’s recently revived, badass female spy genre, first brought to cinematic life with 1966’s Modesty Blaise, and almost killed by Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde, this movie is noteworthy for choosing John Le Carré instead of Ian Fleming as its model, recognizing espionage as a much more subtle game than James Bond ever played. However serious the movie intended to be, though, it falls prey to the potential for melodrama that haunts most spy fiction: except for the “good” people, to whom our sympathies are directed, most of the “bad” people are cartoonishly evil, sadistic, soulless, misogynistic puppets of the state they blindly serve. In spite of this consideration, it’s a worthwhile movie that delivers suspense, mystery, and a plot complicated enough to maintain constant interest.
The movie’s biggest misstep is diverting from a promising plot line that dominates the dialogue in the first third of the movie: the differing power balance, and the control that this power confers, between men and women. This culminates in a profoundly disturbing scene of a nude Jennifer Lawrence humiliating her almost successful rapist in front of his peers. Shot from a discreet distance that serves to amplify its explicit, visceral power, this may be the most justifiable use of female nudity that I’ve ever seen. After this tour de force, however, the movie gives up its daring ambition and resorts to the more or less routine cat and mouse game characteristic of the genre. Of course, if it had pursued this theme, it would have been relegated to a niche audience instead of dominating the weekend box office. Money talks.
The cast performs its task professionally, but I found myself wishing that Jennifer Lawrence had been paired with a man of similar charisma. As it is, there isn’t much chemistry between her and Joel Edgerton, but it works well enough. There was a time, before her unconvincing performances in Passengers and Mother! proved me wrong, that I thought Jennifer Lawrence was the most talented actress since Meryl Streep. Her performance in this movie, probably the most compelling reason to see it, goes a long way toward restoring my faith. Subtle, nuanced, and underplayed, she brings an empathic authenticity to her character, an injured ballerina coerced into becoming a Russian spy, and avoids every pitfall that Charlize Theron fell shamelessly into in the abysmally stupid Atomic Blonde.
Most likely a sign of the times, after 20 years of cinematic exile, the Russians have been restored as the adversaires du jour, and, except for a lot of clumsy Russian accents, I welcome them back. I’m so over North Korea, mostly because their threat to the world is minimal when compared to the Russians’ immense nuclear arsenal and subversive potential. One question, though: how could a movie, sometimes set in Moscow, fail to include at least one location shot of the candy colored confection that’s the Kremlin?
Rating: If you’re a J-Law fan, well worth seeing in a theater. Otherwise, wait for it on HBO.
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