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
Breathe is a 2017 biographical romantic drama starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy. It's the directoral debut of Andy Serkis, of Lord of the Rings/Planet of the Apes fame. It tells the story of Robin Cavendish, who became one of the longest-surviving polio sufferers in history and inspired Teddy Hall to develop a wheelchair which allows people with polio to increase their mobility.
So, this is the second in the inevitable gamut of films which are about some famous historical figure who overcame some kind of tragedy and learned how to overcome adversity. To be clear, my problem isn't with stories about influential people, it's that these kinds of films rarely break any boundaries, and the reason is that these films are made for two reasons. The first is that they almost always have a good box office return, unless they're particularly bad. The second is that they win academy awards pretty often (see The Danish Girl, The Theory of Everything.)
That being said, just like any other genre of film, this one has some great ones and some not so good ones. I certainly didn't think The Theory of Everything was deserving of any awards, but it was a fairly good film.
Luckily, Breathe is one of the better ones. The acting in the film is pretty good across the board. There's very little about the film which is remarkable, but it's serviceable. On the flip side, it's refreshing that this film does have a personal touch. It never feels like it was churned out by some kind of script processing machine. It was written by William Nicholson who's worked on Gladiator and the 2012 adaptation of Les Miserables. This one doesn't quite reach the great heights of those, but the script is one of the better things about the film.
It's worth mentioning the cinematography too, which is beautiful when it needs to be, and shows the struggles and difficulty of living with polio. In fact, that was most likely my favourite thing about the film.
Breathe has a lot of heart and although it doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, it is more effective than a lot of films like this. If you're new to this kind of thing, I wouldn't start with Breathe. But if you're a fan of the genre then I think you'll find this more emotionally involving than Goodbye Christopher Robin, which was released a couple of weeks ago.
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