20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment Bring Direcotr Jason Matthews’ Red Sparrow To Market On May 22

Jennifer Lawrence is, as we all know, the greatest actress of the 21^st Century … four Oscar nominations, including a Best Actress win for her performance as Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook, makes this so.  

But the crown wears heavy after being exposed in Passengers as simply a ride-along — that was Chris Pratt’s movie, with Michael Sheen as Arthur stealing every scene.  This was followed by the disaster of filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!.  You would only need a couple more films like Mother! to make Jennifer Lawrence box office poison.

Red Sparrow, while a step in that direction, is not that film, yet.   Sure, Jennifer Lawrence can be Mystique in the X-Men movies and Katniss Everdeen of Hunger Games until the cows come home, but evidence seems to indicate that her range as the greatest actress of the 21^st Century might be getting defined as limited.

20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment announced this past week that director Francis Lawrence’s (no relationship to Jennifer) film adaptation of the Jason Matthews’ spy thriller, Red Sparrow, will be arriving in the home entertainment marketplace on May 22 as a three-SKU array of product offerings.

The ARR is a zippy-quick 81 days and domestic receipts currently register a disappointing $46.5 million.

 

Planned for release are a stand-alone DVD edition and Combo Packs for Blu-ray/DVD and 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray configurations.

Jennifer Lawrence is a Russian ballerina named Dominika Egorova, who is recruited by her uncle (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) to become a Russian “sex-bot” agent named Sparrow … whose skill-set will be to charm and seduce targets and then eliminate them.  

You can’t help but think about Angelina Jolie’s performance in Salt when watching Red Sparrow … Jolie is simply more seductive than Jennifer Lawrence, sorry.  And with Red Sparrow coming so soon on the heels of Atomic Blonde, you realize that Charlize Theron is simply more kick-ass than Jennifer Lawrence will ever hope to be.

Does this mean that Red Sparrow is a bad movie?   Absolutely not … 20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment will have no problem moving units and those who missed the film theatrically will have few, if any complaints about this evening’s viewing choice.    

Red Sparrow is, in fact, a good, solid action film that will seem familiar … Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron are simply better at it.   Bottom line, a red light is now flashing for Jennifer Lawrence … Dominika Egorova/Sparrow is not her next franchise character, just a one-off.   Hollywood can be cruel to ingénues as there is always the next new star waiting in the wings.

Bonus features common to all three release SKUs are commentary by director Francis Lawrence (Water for Elephants, I Am Legend … and who directed Jennifer in the final three Hunger Games films) and deleted scenes with optional commentary from Francis Lawrence.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD is a five-part look at the production of Red Sparrow titled “A New Cold War: Origination and Adaptation.”