FROM RUSSIA, UNLOVED........BQ READS THE BOOK! SEES THE MOVIE! THE COMPLETE 'RED SPARROW' REVIEWS....

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (2013).......Red Sparrow (film-2018)

          
           Whew........pardon us while we rub our eyes........been a while since we did a marathon book-and-movie thing in a matter of days.......

            Surprise, surprise, surprise.......the book's infinitely better.

             The movie's a glum, worthless, overlong slog.........shredded from the book with a chainsaw and primarily infatuated with stripping off Jennifer Lawrence's clothes at every opportunity.

             Jason Matthews poured a lifetime of experience as a CIA operative into his densely plotted novel.......brimming with spy-vs-spy 'tradecraft', multiple double and triple-crosses and characters with so many shifting loyalties and agendas you almost need a spread sheet to track them all.....

              No getting around it.....it's a daunting read but the payoffs for a reader are terrific......astonishing twists and startling bursts of laugh-out-loud humor.  (and not to mention recipes for all the food consumed, which range from tempting to downright revolting...)

              If there was ever a book that screamed out for a full mini-series treatment to effectively portray all of its byzantine plotting.....it was "Red Sparrow".....

               Instead, we get this dumb, gloomy feature film adaptation.......in which screenwriter Justin Haythe tears through the book with a weed whacker in a misguided attempt to disgorge a simplistic, Reader's Digest, easy-to-swallow version.

               Even with Haythe's strenuous, wrong-headed cuts and alterations, the movie still drags along for 2 hours and 20 minutes.........his re-plotting of the book's finale twist seemed especially arrogant to us.........no, Justin, you're not a better writer than Jason Matthews, no matter what the suits at 20th Century Fox told you.......

               And the much beloved J-Law?   When she's not peeling off articles of clothing, she morosely wanders through this movie with the vacant expression of a runway fashion model who popped too many downers.   Not what you'd call a compelling performance.......she looks like she had trouble staying awake in between fending off assorted rapes and stabbings........

               An easy-to-rate book/movie binge, this one.........BQ says read the book, by all means....4 stars (****), skip the movie at all costs.....Zero Stars (0)....borderline unwatchable.......for excellent, dramatized spycraft, stick with episodes of "The Americans" and "Killing Eve"....