โRed Sparrowโ is Russian spy craft for what could be called a โhoney potโ. It is an enticing and intriguing person willing to bend to your every whim, only to double-cross and lead you into destruction. When a former ballerina becomes a Sparrow – then secrets, and blood, will likely be spilled. Hope you can get that carpet cleanedโฆ
Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) is the ballet prima donna at the Russian ballet, until an unfortunate accident. With a bum leg, Dominika will no longer star in the ballet, and she will be tossed out of her place. Her mother will get no medical care, unless her uncle, Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), can help her. But she has little choice but to take Ivanโs offer: Sparrow Training Center.
Ivan runs the Russian Security Services (the new and improved KGB). Dominika goes to the training center to become adept at seduction and persuasion. If not, her mother will die. The strict woman who runs the school is the Matron (Charlotte Rampling) and she runs the place with an Iron Curtain fist. Dominika is stripped of all dignity, and at times, all of her clothes. Brutal training includes humiliation, beatings and near rapes. Ivan takes her away for a mission. There is a highly placed general named Korchnoi (Jeremy Irons) who thinks Ivan is not carful enough with the mission.
Her objective is to seduce a Russian oligarch who had made a little too much money. But she is brutalized and he is brutally killed. Dominika is taken away and given a new assignment. She is sent to Europe to attach herself to a CIA agent named Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton). Nash has a super-secret mole, a source inside the Russian government that Ivan and his pals want to โtalk toโ. That is spy talk for torture and slowly kill.