After taking a creative flying leap with the director Darren Aronofsky’s divisive “Mother!,” Jennifer Lawrence looks likely to land on safer commercial ground with “Red Sparrow.” The spy thriller reunites the star with Francis Lawrence, who directed the final three installments of her hugely successful “Hunger Games” franchise and puts her back in the action arena where she has scored with a trio of “X-Men” films.
Based on a novel by Jason Matthews, “Red Sparrow” casts Ms. Lawrence as Dominika Egorova, a Russian ballerina forced to become a student at the Sparrow School, which trains young people to seduce and betray enemy operatives. When she develops feelings for one of her targets, a C.I.A. agent (Joel Edgerton), she is tempted to become a traitor to Mother Russia.
The new trailer for the film also incorporates footage of Charlotte Rampling as the head of the Sparrow School and Jeremy Irons as a Russian general who informs Dominika, “You are better at this than any of us. Your only problem is you have a soul.”
With echoes of TV series like “Alias” and “The Americans,” as well as a touch of Mr. Aronofsky’s film “Black Swan,” “Red Sparrow” seems well-timed as both a female-empowerment thriller and a cautionary tale of Russian-government deception. It hits theaters on March 2.
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