Red Sparrow is a 2018 spy-thriller film directed by Francis Lawrence who worked with Jennifer Lawrence (the star here) on a couple of the Hunger Games movies, but this is a very different beast. Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova (in, it has to be said, a not entirely convincing Russian accent), and Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenarts and Charlotte Rampling star as the film's secondary characters. This one is a pretty big departure from what Lawrence has done in the past, although it has to be said that she's making some pretty bold career choices. I'm not the first one to say that, and for a good reason: it's true. After last year's Mother! it appeared as if she was trying purposefully trying to appear in more "mature" films, and believe me, it doesn't get much more mature than Red Sparrow. The film plays out like one of those schlocky exploitation from the seventies, in that there's sexual violence, sex, violence, torture, and all manner o
Victoria and Abdul was directed by Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Launderette, High Fidelity), and the screenplay was adapted from the novel of the same name by Lee Hall. It stars Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, Ali Fazal as Abdul Karim and Eddie Izzard as Bertie, the Prince of Wales.
The film explores Queen Victoria's relationship with Abdul Karim, a man who was originally her servant and later became her "munshi," a Persian word used in India to describe a language teacher. Of course, there are certain problems during Victoria's reign, and those problems make up the bulk of the film.
I'll start with the good things. A lot of the stuff is naturalistic and functional, and a film like this could do with as little embellishment in possible in terms of cinematography and visual style. Of course, it should look nice, and the action should be clear, but it shouldn't detract us from the drama and narrative themes. In that respect, Danny Cohen's cinematography is one of the most impressive parts of the film.
The performances are pretty good across the board, particularly Judie Dench and Ali Fazal as the main characters. There's a very palpable chemistry between the two of them, and the time they spend together definitely make up the best parts of this film.
Which is where the problems start to come in. The acting abilities of the two stars aren't enough to help this film rise above its other elements. The main problem I had with it was that there just wasn't enough depth to the film. The script touches on more interesting topics every now and then, pointing out problems with the British Empire and colonialism, but it's still very much a film which is more fond of overly-dramatic scenes than narrative depth. In a film like this, each scene should be subtle and played down, but instead it feels like the filmmakers were trying to wring as much emotion out of the audience as possible in every scene.
There's very little bite to the film, either. It all feels like something you'd find on the TV on a Sunday afternoon, when the least amount of people are watching. There aren't many scenes in the film which stuck out to me, or affected me in a significant way.
It's not that the film is bad, it's just incredibly forgettable. I can't see any reason to watch this again, and as soon as I left the cinema screen I'd forgotten about almost everything I'd just seen. You can tell from the outset what's going to happen at the end of the film, and there just aren't enough memorable scenes in the film to forgive the writers for that. If you're looking for a comedy-drama to watch this winter, you could do much better than Victoria and Abdul.
Score: C-
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