4k-UHD/Movie Review: Red Sparrow

 

Red Sparrow is a 2018 film adaptation of the first book in a trilogy of spy novels. The movie stars Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Mary-Louise Parker, and Joely Richardson. It centers around a Russian ballerina named Dominika (played by Jennifer Lawrence), who, after suffering a career-ending injury, is forced into a spy training program called the Red Sparrows, which trains young Russian women in spycraft.

An easy comparison for the film would be "The Americans" TV series. However, while there are some character parallels between Keri Russell's character on the show and Lawrence's character in the movie since it is set entirely overseas, the better comparison would be to Atomic Blonde, with less over-the-top fight scenes. The movie is a spy thriller with a KGB vs. CIA kind of plotline, with the loyalties of almost every character called into question at some point. While it is set in the modern-day (there are cell phones and laptops), because the spycraft in the novels was deliberately kept old so that the author did not reveal any modern-day secrets, the movie has a very cold-war 1970s-1980s feel to it. As a result, some of the technology in the film is very old-school. Those old enough to remember 3.5" discs will find it hilarious that they are being used to copy files off a modern-day laptop computer. If any laptop had a 3.5" disc drive, they have not been around in a long time.

The 4K set is a two-disc set with a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc.  The UHD disc has just the movie and the director's commentary. The movie looks and sounds great in the ultra-high-definition format.  The regular Blu-Ray has all the other extras, including previews, deleted scenes, and over an hour's worth of making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes. So, there is a decent amount of bonus material for those who like to watch the extras. Overall, the movie is very good. It is well-written and acted, and Lawrence takes on a different role than those she had played up to that point. The movie is very violent, and there is some nudity with a lot of sexual tones and themes. The movie is a bit different from the book it was adapted from, but it generally stays true to the story in the book.

Book Review: The Kremlin's Candidate

 

This is the final novel in the Red Sparrow series of spy novels involving the Russian double agent Dominika Egorova. There is a time jump from the end of the second novel, and now Dominika is in the running to become the new head of the SVR. This means she will have unparalleled access to information to feed to the Americans, but it also puts her in more danger as it becomes much harder for her to pass the information along to the CIA. The main plot of the novel is that there is a Russian mole, code-named Magnit, who is in line to become the new director of the CIA after the death of the current director. Of course, if the mole becomes the director, Dominika's identity immediately becomes known to the Russians and she would be sent off to a Gulag and killed. So, there is a race to uncover the identity of the mole and prevent the mole from being confirmed as director, and it, of course, includes the usual spy thriller twists and turns with nearly every main character in danger at some point.

The book clocks in at about 430 pages. It is not an extremely fast read (it took me 21 days to get through it, and I am a fairly quick reader), but how quickly you can get through it really depends on how much time you can devote to reading it. The chapters are fairly short, anywhere from five to ten pages on average, so there are plenty of natural stopping points if you read just an hour or two at a time. There are a few new characters in the book, but the focus is mostly on the established characters, especially Dominika and Nate, and Putin plays a very large role in this novel, much moreso than he did in the prior two. The ending does leave open the possibility of additional stories, but the tone would definitely be changed somewhat because the characters definitely end up in a very different place from where they started. Chances are, it will be the end of the story, however, especially since the Red Sparrow movie pretty much flopped and there is not any pressure to keep a movie franchise alive. If you liked the prior novels, this is definitely worth reading.

Book Review: Palace of Treason

 

This is the second in the trilogy of Red Sparrow novels by ex-CIA agent Jason Matthews. It continues the story of Dominika acting as a double agent for the USA against Russia. The plot involves a new boss that wants her out of the way, an Iranian nuclear facility that the Americans want to sabotage, and Dominika becoming a favorite of Putin. There is also the discovery of another mole for Russia inside the US government who presents a threat to Dominika's cover.

This is a very good middle portion of the story. It has a lot of action and does not get bogged down like a lot of middle installments of trilogies do. It does continue the complicated romance story between Nate and Dominika, but that part does not dominate the book so much that it gets annoying or slows down the plot. The pace of the story is much like the first book, and like in the first book, the end of each chapter includes a recipe for some dish that was mentioned in the chapter.

Overall, if you like spy thriller novels, and you liked the first book, you will probably like this one. On the other hand, if you did not get into the first book, this one is not likely to do much for you. The only thing I would caution is that if you did not like the movie Red Sparrow, do not let that dissuade you from reading the books if you are generally a fan of spy thrillers because the books are much better than the movie adaptation.