Needless to say that I had never actually heard about this 2022 Chinese action sci-fi movie titled "The Red Sparrow", from director Ji Zhizhong, prior to stumbling upon it here in 2023 by random chance. And given my love of the Asian cinema, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. And I will admit that the movie's cyberpunk cover definitely had a certain appeal to it.
However, the storyline in the movie was somewhat of a swing and a miss. It was incredibly difficult to get submerged into the storyline, because it was all over the place. The audience are never allowed to delve into the setting or really get acquainted with the characters, and that makes watching "The Red Sparrow" a rather shallow viewing experience.
And to make matters worse, then the majority of the movie was apparently done with some questionable green screen, and it was blatantly obvious, and that certainly took away a lot of enjoyment from the movie for me. It just didn't look right, because the green screen effects and the CGI was of somewhat dubious quality from time to time.
I think director Ji Zhizhong set out to accomplish way more than what was possible to deliver, and that was also something that caused the movie to suffer. The viewing experience of "The Red Sparrow" just never come across as being something overly enjoyable or pleasing. A shame really, because the setting of the movie seemed like it had a lot of potential.
The acting performances in "The Red Sparrow" were fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, however.
There is a good amount of action throughout the course of the 77 minutes that the movie ran for. And thankfully the action sequences did a good amount to help alleviate for the shortcomings of the movie, making it bearable to sit through, if you can endure the mundane script and bland character gallery.
"The Red Sparrow" is not a movie that I would recommend you to rush out to get to watch. And truth be told, the movie is barely watchable the first time around, thus having absolutely zero replay value.
My rating of director Ji Zhizhong's 2022 movie "The Red Sparrow" lands on a flat five out of ten stars.
