The Jennifer Lawrence-starring Russian spy film Red Sparrow, currently in theaters, has arrived at a time when U.S.-Russia relations are constantly in the news, with the ongoing investigation into possible interference in the 2016 presidential election still making headlines.
But the stars and director Francis Lawrence say the timeliness of the film — about a former ballerina who becomes a Russian spy and learns how to use her body as a weapon, embarking on a complicated relationship with a CIA agent played by Joel Edgerton — is merely a coincidence.
I didn’t intend on making a political film. When we started three years ago, the politics that are in the movie were pretty irrelevant, actually, Francis Lawrence told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Red Sparrow‘s New York premiere. We used to have conversations about that like, ‘Oh this modern Cold War thing, it doesn’t feel that relevant.’ But we were interested in the characters and the journey of Dominika, Jen’s character, and then as time went on, the election happened and things started to come up and the movie just started to feel more and more relevant.
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