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
Kidnap is an American thriller film directed by Luis Prieto, written by Knate Lee and starring Halle Berry. It tells the story of a young mother, Karla Dyson, who ends up chasing a couple down a highway when she realises that they've kidnapped her son. What follows is a thriller influenced by films like Stephen Spielberg's Duel. However, there is another major influence on this film - Taken starring Liam Neeson. In fact, Kidnap is essentially a female-led version of the same story.
I'll start with the good stuff. The entire cast in this film is doing the best they can with the material they've been given. Halle Berry is very charismatic, and gives a very committed performance, and that is practically the only positive aspect of this film. The character is so basic, and has so little depth, that there's really very little she could have done to make it more engaging than it is.
But the worst thing about this film by far is the editing. I don't know what Avi Youabian, the editor, was thinking while working on this film but it just does not work. Some of it is so choppy and fast that you can barely tell what's going on. The fact that it shifts so unnaturally made me very conscious of the fact that I was watching a film, and at points it was laughably bad. There's a scene involving a fight between Halle Berry and a woman in a car which has the worst editing I've seen all year. So, the fight scenes are too fast and choppy. However, the scenes in which we see Halle Berry driving down the street, and the montage at the beginning where we see Halle Berry playing with her child, are far too slow and incredibly dull.
Which brings me to my next problem with the film. Kidnap is almost entirely the same scene repeated over and over again, and it starts to become annoying. Halle Berry gets in her car, follows the kidnappers, then they stop and there's a small altercation, and the entire thing repeates like this until about twenty five minutes before the end when she tracks down the kidnappers' house. Unfortunately, this scene is entirely devoid of threat because it's incredibly dull, and we know exactly what will happen at the end as soon as it begins.
I just want to cover a point I mentioned earlier in this review. This film is practically riding on the success of Taken, to the point where there's a scene which is a carbon copy of Liam Neeson's famous "particular set of skills" speech in message if not in actual content. In my opinion, the film industry could do with less films like this, but that's an argument for another blog post.
Overall, Kidnap is an incredibly predictable film which is mostly devoid of tension. Despite the cast's (particularly Halle Berry's) best efforts, poor editing and writing prevent the film's novel concept being any fun. If you're looking for a decent film to watch on Netflix, I'd give something else a go.
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