Welcome To Movie Recall. In Today's video, we will be going through the 2018 Action Thriller
film : “Red Sparrow”.
It's Time To Recall.
Let's Get Started.
Turn On Subtitles and Spoilers Ahead!
The story begins by jumping back and forth between
the lives of our two protagonists in Russia.
First, there is Dominika Egorova, a famous ballerina that is in charge of taking care
of her
sick mom. After a visit to the doctor, Dominika leaves her mother with a caretaker so she
can
go to work. Once in the theatre, she changes and
puts on make-up before going to meet the guests,
which include her uncle Ivan Egorov, Deputy Director of Russian secret service.
He introduces her to Dimitry Ustinov, a Russian gangster that asks her for a picture and takes
the chance to touch her improperly. Moments later, the play begins, and Dominika is dancing
as wonderfully as ever when suddenly, his dancing
partner jumps and lands on her leg, breaking it.
Dominika is immediately taken to have surgery. The other character we follow is Nate Nash,
a CIA agent, who is taking a phone call from an
automatic caller that dictates some words to him.
He uses those words to decode the address of
a meeting location, and he takes his gun with
him before leaving. The chosen spot for the secret
meeting is the park at night, and when he arrives
there, he notices he's being followed by a car.
A mysterious man, codename Marble, is walking
towards him as well, and Nate hands him something as they cross each other on the road before
they
go on as if nothing happened. The car is still following him, though, so to give the man
a chance
to escape, Nate creates a distraction by shooting the floor and starts running away as the car
gives
him chase. He reaches town and is surrounded by
the police just as he makes it to the American
embassy. Inside, he meets with his bosses, who
tell him the asset is safe, but Nate will still
be sent back to the USA for his mistake. The next day, Ivan visits Colonel Zakharov,
director of the secret service, in his office - General Vladimir Korchnoi is there as well.
They show Ivan a video of Nate's meeting at the
park and mention he's a CIA agent that left the
country that morning, but their main interest lies
in the other man and finding out his identity.
We cut to Dominika then, who is waking up at
the hospital to find her leg in a metal frame,
she starts crying when she realizes she won't be able to dance again.
Three months pass. Dominika, who is still walking with the aid of a cane,
is visited by Ivan. He comments on the fact a replacement for her has already been found
and how the theatre had been lending them the
apartment and covering her mom's medical expenses,
all that will stop soon now that she doesn't work for them anymore. Ivan says he wants
to
help her and asks her to come to him when she's
ready, he also leaves an envelope for her before
leaving. Dominika opens the envelope and finds pictures that show her dancing partner has
been
romantically involved with her replacement, plus a recording of a conversation between
them that implies he jumped on her on purpose so his girlfriend could take Dominika's place.
Later that day, we find Dominika in the theatre, watching her former partner and
the new girl practice. After they're done, they
go to the steam room and Dominika follows them,
only to find them having relations. Rage takes over and Dominika starts using her cane to
beat
them both to the ground before running away. On the bus home, she sees her hands stained
with blood and decides to get off, stopping by a
payphone to report what she did as an accident.
When she arrives at her apartment, she finds her mom on the bathroom floor, the caretaker
nowhere in sight - her mom tells her she didn't come because the theatre stopped paying her.
Knowing she has no other choice now, Dominika goes to see her uncle to ask him for help.
He accepts as long as she helps him in return with a little case: the secret service wants
to
know more about Ustinov, whom Dominika had met
at the theatre. Ivan wants her to approach him,
befriend him and gain his trust using her charms.
Dominika at first refuses, but Ivan wins her over
by reminding her how awful state hospitals are and
how he can give her mom the best doctors instead.
That very night, Dominika goes to the hotel Ustinov is staying in,
wearing the dress she's been given. She goes to
the bar to wait for Ustinov to approach her first,
which he does. Dominika tells him she's come to see him, wanting to feel special again,
so they leave for her room. She asks the guards to
give them privacy and Ustinov starts undressing as
soon as his men leave the room, then asks Dominika
to do the same. She does so after some hesitation,
and when she comes closer, Ustinov wastes no time
in taking advantage of her. Their intercourse is
suddenly interrupted when a man wearing a black
helmet appears behind Ustinov and cuts his throat.
The body is thrown on the floor and after asking for silence with a gesture,
the man throws Dominika a coat for her to cover
her blood-stained body and takes her out of the
room through a back door. When they make it to
the parking lot, he shoots an employee before
getting them on his bike and driving away to an
abandoned building. Inside, the man takes off his
helmet to reveal Sergei Matorin, another secret service agent sent by Ivan, who is in another
room in the same building together with Korchnoi, watching Dominika on the security cameras.
When
Korchnoi mentions she's a witness and she should
be eliminated, Ivan mentions she could be useful.
Ivan changes rooms to go see Dominika, and confesses he did know what would happen in
that
room and didn't tell her because she wouldn't have
done it if she knew. He makes her an offer then:
since she's so good at this, she can be sent to a
special institution to be trained to be an agent.
If she refuses, he won't be able to protect her, so she can only accept.
Dominika leaves for the institution a couple of days later. When she arrives there, she's
received by Matron, the Headmistress of Sparrow School. She gives Dominika a fake name to
use in
the school before taking her to her room. Classes
start soon after that - Matron talks about the
modern world being in chaos and how Russia is the
only country willing to make sacrifices to fix it.
The students will be trained to be Sparrows, spies
who specialized in seduction and psychological
manipulation. Dominika and a student named Viktor
are called to the front of the class and asked
to strip, Viktor does so without issues, but Dominika doesn't dare. Matron scolds her for
it.
We then cut to Nate, who's been summoned by the CIA's discipline panel to be informed
he'll be suspended for his mistake in Russia and he can't leave the country.
Nate protests because their mole, Marble, has
been working with Nate for three years and
won't trust anybody else, but he isn't heard. Back in the Sparrow School, during a class
with Matron, she tells them they need to be able to identify what their targets want.
She puts some videos on tv for examples for them
to work on: the first one Viktor guesses wrong and
Dominika corrects him, earning her his dislike. The second is guessed by another female student,
who is called to the front of the class and told she will have to use her mouth on the
man from the video, who is brought into the classroom in cuffs. The girl gets on her knees
but is incapable of doing it, she falls to the
floor crying. Matron reminds all the students
that they need to learn to trick their bodies and teaches them some basic seduction tricks.
Back in the USA, Nate notices he's being tailed and informs his superiors of this.
He learns that the CIA hasn't heard anything from Marble and he takes
the chance to remind them he will talk if it's Nate that contacts him.
They reach a deal: he can't still go back to
Russia, but they can send him to a country
nearby so the Russian secret service will know he's around and Marble will resurface.
Nate accepts for the team to come with him. Meanwhile, in the school, the students are
asked
to give a welcome to a group of soldiers that just returned home from war. Dominika chooses
a young man and takes him to her room where she
successfully gives him a hand. Later that day,
Matron and the students watch all the videos of their performances with the soldiers,
Matron tells Dominika her technique was good but she still hasn't learned to give herself
up.
After class is over, Dominika goes to the showers, where she's assaulted by Viktor.
She defends herself by taking the water tap from the wall and hitting him with it.
In the meantime, Ivan, Korchnoi and Zakharov are discussing the fact Nate has been relocated
to Budapest. They want to do something about it, but they know the president
doesn't want them anything that may come off as antagonistic against the USA. Ivan proposes
they give the mission to someone else. Back in the Sparrow School, Matron and a
newly arrived Korchnoi question Dominika for her
attack on Viktor. Matron thinks Dominika still
has potential, Korchnoi asks for a moment alone
with her. After everyone else leaves the room,
he questions Dominika again, and she explains she owes and serves the state, not her classmate.
She's allowed to go back to class, where Matron once again calls her to the front while Korchnoi
watches from a security camera. Dominika is shown
a picture of Viktor and asked what he wants as he
enters the room. Matron orders her to give him
what he wants. Viktor asks her to turn around,
Dominika refuses and gets into action: as she
undresses, he tells Viktor to look at only her and
once she's completely naked, she sits on the table
with her legs open, egging him on to take her.
Viktor can't get it up and runs away when she teases him for it. Then Dominika
answers Matron's question: what he wants is power. Korchnoi is impressed. Moments later,
Matron meets with Dominika in private again and tells her she'll be sent back to Moscow.
Days later, while reuniting with her mom at their
place, Dominika receives a call that tells her to
meet Ivan at a restaurant. When she makes it
there, she sits with him and he explains her
next mission: she'll be sent to Budapest to befriend Nate and gain his trust so she can
learn the identity of their mole. He gives her
a new passport and documents with a new name.
Dominika leaves without eating. She makes it to Budapest a couple of days
later,
and goes to stay at an apartment she'll share with a fellow Sparrow Marta.
Later that day, she meets with her new boss, station chief Maxim Volontov, and asks him
for
some information on Nate. Afterward, she follows Nate around to learn his routine.
The next day, Dominika starts going to the same swimming pool as Nate, and lets him
go to her when they leave the building. They chitchat a bit but Dominika plays hard to
get,
she also makes up a story about being a translator for the embassy. The following day, however,
she doesn't find Nate at the pool, and the receptionist tells her that her ID has gone
missing.
Turns out, Nate already knows she isn't what she says. We cut to him explaining
to his superiors that she's been using many names and making the connection to Ivan.
He thinks she's valuable and that her using her real name is a provocation.
After some hesitation, his superiors allow him to get closer to her to gather intel.
After going to Volontov to report her progress and ask for an embassy pass, Dominika visits
the embassy and sees Marta chatting with Stephanie Boucher, an American politician.
Nate interrupts her staring to chat, admitting he was the one to steal her ID from the pool,
and asks her out to dinner the next day at eight. Dominika accepts before leaving.
Back in her apartment, Dominika searches Marta's room and discovers she's been buying intelligence
from Boucher. Marta returns home then, but doesn't
catch her in the act. She gives Dominika a copy of
the report Volontov sent to Moscow, apparently Dominika has made an enemy. The next day after
work, she follows Volontov into a bar and asks him to buy her time with a better report,
then provokes him into punching her by making fun of his small member. His violence is now
on
the security cameras and Dominika tells him he'll
write a better report or she'll take the recording
to the police. While all this is happening, Nate
is alone in a restaurant, waiting for his date.
Thinking he's been stood up, he leaves the place, but Dominika is following him closely.
Back in his apartment, Nate receives another coded message on the phone that he quickly
writes down and deciphers: it says Viena. He's about to leave when a crying Dominika
rings his bell, he allows her to come in. While sharing some whisky, Dominika tells
him his boss assaulted him. When Nate asks her
how she knows where he lives, she raises the
volume of the tv so they can't be heard. Dominika asks him what happened in that park in Russia
and kisses him after he tells her. Nate tells her to go home and figure out what she wants.
The next day, Ivan visits Dominika before leaving
for Viena. He asks about her progress with Nate
since their superiors are getting impatient. To buy time, she lies and tells him she's
also
working with Marta on her Boucher case, but she'll
need more money. Ivan accepts and asks for his
coat to leave, Dominika gets it for him but not
without secretly taking a peek at his passport.
After he's gone, Marta approaches Dominika with her gun: she overhead the lie and is
angry because the Boucher case is supposed to
be only hers. Dominika promises she'll give
her all the credit and more money, she just lied for the extra time. Marta only accepts
because she has no other choice. Later on, Dominika goes to Vienna and opens a bank
account there while Marta visits Volontov to
tell him she knows how to get rid of Dominika.
Dominika returns to her place that night and finds Marta murdered in the bathtub.
Suddenly, Sergei appears behind her and grabs her by the neck to pass on a warning: this
is
what happens to those that share secrets. He also
tells her to call the police before he disappears.
We cut to Nate there, who is reporting to his
superiors about having met with Marble in Vienna.
Marble has given him some files confirming Dominika is a Sparrow, and that makes Nate
think she's even more recruitable. Meanwhile, Dominika is being interrogated by the police,
but she tells them nothing. When she leaves the
precinct, she finds Nate outside waiting for her.
They go back to his place, where he confesses he knows she's a Sparrow. Dominika tells him
her story in return, putting emphasis on the fact
she only cares about her mother's well-being. Nate
asks her to be a double-agent for him, promising her protection, she replies she needs to sleep.
He gives her his room. Later in the night, she
leaves the room and joins Nate on the couch.
After asking if she can trust him and getting a positive answer, she makes love to him.
The next morning, after she confirms she accepts his deal, Dominika goes back to her routine,
writes a fake report on Nate saying she has him in her pocket and then returns
to her place to wait for his signal, which is a
simple phone call that plays her favorite song.
Dominika meets with Nate's superiors and is put
through a liar detector test to see if she can be
trusted. When they accept her, she asks for money.
They laugh at her, but they change their minds
when she tells them she can give them Boucher. The
following Friday, the whole team flies to London
to meet with Boucher. Dominika stays in a special
hotel room the CIA prepared for her with security
cameras to monitor her and a set of disks hidden
under a desk to change for the real ones later.
Moments later, while she's at the bar waiting for
Boucher, he's surprised by the sudden appearance
of Volontov who supposedly wants to help. Dominika sends him to her room, otherwise
his presence will scare Boucher off. Boucher arrives soon afterward and Dominika goes to
her,
explaining Marta sent her. Boucher doesn't like
this change and is about to leave, but Dominika
convinces her to stay when she threatens her with
some dangerous pictures and mentions the money.
Both women go to Dominika's room where Volontov is
waiting. Boucher gives her the disks in exchange
for the money, and Dominika pretends to take the
disks to her computer to check they're real when
she's actually trading them with the CIA's. Dominika and Volontov leave then after telling
Boucher to wait an hour to leave too, but Boucher
is anxious and drunk so she leaves soon after.
When she makes it to the street, she notices she's being followed and gets scared, so she
throws the money in a trashcan and crosses the
street where a truck hits and kills her. Dominika
is in a car with Volontov when this happens, and
he quickly gets the news on the phone. He tells
Dominika they've been given orders to return to Moscow immediately and takes her passport.
When they make it to Moscow, Ivan takes the disks from Volontov before arresting him.
Both he and Dominika are under suspicion of having helped the Americans. When asked about
it,
she denies it, so she starts being tortured in different ways for the real answer,
but she doesn't give in. They even show her a video of how Volontov was shot for lying,
but when the interrogator points at her head and she lies again, nothing happens.
Ivan takes over then, and Dominika manages to
manipulate him into protecting her. She's allowed
to return home, but when she gets there, she feels so dirty she doesn't let her mom hug
her.
After a difficult meeting with Korchnoi and Zakharov, Ivan returns to his apartment,
where Dominika is waiting. He tells her they've granted her request to let her keep
working on Nate, she kisses him before leaving. Dominika returns to Budapest and meets with
Nate.
They go to his apartment, where he expresses his suspicions of her quick release.
Dominika convinces him to relocate her and her mom
to America and to give her more money, he accepts
before they make love. In the middle of the night, Dominika wakes up when she hears a
noise,
she goes to the kitchen to find Sergei torturing Nate. She pretends to be on his side at first,
even helping him hurt Nate to get the name of the mole. But when Sergei gets distracted,
she hits him back and helps Nate cut the straps tying him to the chair. The three of them
get into
a fight that doesn't last long: Sergei slips and Dominika takes the chance to stab him.
She wakes up in the hospital the next day, and leaves her room to have a smoke.
She's then approached by Korchnoi, who reveals himself as Marble.
He thinks he'll be caught soon and doesn't want to
die in vain, so he asks Dominika to expose him so
she can become a national hero and take his place
as a mole. She doesn't give him a definite answer,
but after he leaves, she checks on Nate and leaves
as well. She gives herself up to the police and
asks to see the Russian ambassador, when she's taken to him, she tells him to call Zakharov
and
inform him she has the name of the mole, which she'll give him in exchange for her freedom.
A meeting to do the exchange is arranged later that night at an airport. Nate will walk with
her to confirm the identity of the mole and she
mustn't try to run or she'll be shot. Nate is
angry with her because he thinks she's used him,
but she has a surprise: when the Russians approach
them with the mole, they take the bag off his face
to reveal it's not Korchnoi - it's her uncle Ivan,
who has been framed thanks to Dominika fabricating evidence since she made it to Budapest the
first
time. Nate quickly catches on and confirms Ivan is the mole. After the exchange is done,
Ivan is shot by a Russian sniper and Dominika is taken away on a helicopter.
Back in Russia, she's named a heroine and allowed to have a good life with her mom.
The movie ends when she receives a phone call and
the only sound on the line is her favorite song.
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