Red Sparrow Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs...

5. The Messy Pacing

Red Sparrow's pacing is, from beginning to end, completely all over the place. The movie's first act is in such a rush to establish Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) as a ballerina-turned-Russian spy that it doesn't really stop to examine her as a human being, or even make her transformation seem especially plausible.

By the mid-way point, the movie slows down to a deathly crawl and you might be left wishing it'd clip along a little faster, with director Francis Lawrence and editor Alan Edward Bell training their focus on some of the less interesting aspects of Dominika's story.

Clearly, the script and the edit both needed another pass, to spend more time on Dominika's character development while streamlining some of the more tedious elements introduced later on.