From the moment the first trailer dropped for Red Sparrow, the latest collaboration between The Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence and director Francis Lawrence, the film has been drawing comparisons to Marvel’s Black Widow.
It is of course easy to see why: both feature Russian girls forced into spy programmes, which happen to include ballet lessons, who then go rogue and turn the tables on their former masters. And, speaking to Screen Rant, director Lawrence has made a point of playing down the similarities:
“There’s people who think it’s very similar to the Black Widow story,” said Lawrence. “This is not pulled from BW, this is pulled from Red Sparrow, you know, it’s just like written by a guy who was in the CIA. It’s like, his references are coming from a very very different place from that. But there’ll always be that. People like to put things in boxes, and I think is a really unique film. This is a thriller, it’s not action, again it’s not gadgety. It’s a hard-R. There’s violence, it’s a bit perverse, it’s suspenseful, a lot of intrigue. It‘s a very different kind of spy film.”
So, with that out of the way, we have a new TV spot for the movie, which you can watch here…
When she suffers a career-ending injury, Dominika and her mother are facing a bleak and uncertain future. That is why she finds herself manipulated into becoming the newest recruit for Sparrow School, a secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young people like her to use their bodies and minds as weapons. After enduring the perverse and sadistic training process, she emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow the program has ever produced. Dominika must now reconcile the person she was with the power she now commands, with her own life and everyone she cares about at risk, including an American CIA agent who tries to convince her he is the only person she can trust.
Red Sparrow is set for release on March 2nd and sees Jennifer Lawrence leading a cast that includes Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons, Mary-Louise Parker, Charlotte Rampling, and Ciaran Hinds.