I waited for this to be on HBO so I could DVR it and not have to pay for it. The essence of the plot seemed like a hatchet job on the Black Widow's backstory from the Marvel universe, so I wasn't exactly in any hurry to see it. I probably should have known better. Sure, there's the whole special school for Russian, previously Soviet, spies, but that's actually historically accurate. That's pretty much where the similarities end. This tale is a lot more John LeCarre than Ian Flemming, and not at all, God rest, San Lee. It was actually a very refreshing take on the spy genre, from a female perspective. In most other films where people train to be spies there are sequences where they are learning proficiency with weapons, hand to hand combat, and high speed driving. Here we get a shot of some students in the distance at a firing range, and that's it. Why? Simple, its assumed these people are taught to be proficient with guns, knives, etc. There's no need to keep pounding that one home with a montage. In fact, what you actually see is that if a spy draws and uses his weapon it means something's gone horribly wrong and he's likely going to be disciplined as a result. A lot more realistic than James Bond in three different running shoot outs in public. The time in the school is more spent on what it means to be an object and how to turn that to your advantage. She picks up some tradecraft too, that foreshadows parts of the ending. Certainly there's a statement about the way women are viewed and treated in Russian society, as well as a pervasive feeling that there might no longer be an iron curtain, but the old Soviet way of doing things didn't just go away because that curtain fell. It has a masterfully crafted ending that is not really what one expects, especially if you're more accustomed to typical American films of this genre. I'm not going to spoil it, but true to her training she's become a master manipulator and the damsel has swum with and ends up eating the sharks.

Its definitely a more realistic take on intelligence officers. Its dark and ugly at times. So why no 10 stars? Well, its minor, but there's a scene in it that involves nudity, which was not merely gratuitous; it was pivotal for character development. It seemed like a lot was done with camera angles, blocking,etc. to avoid her being stark naked. I suppose there's various ways to look at it. Arguments could be made that it wasn't about her, but about her becoming part of something larger than herself, but I find such an explanation at odds with the film's conclusion. In the end it just seemed that they tried to limit the skin time on screen, and I get it on a personal level, but it seemed like she was holding back, and an actor of her caliber should have just gone for it. The film had already earned its R rating, and a little more nudity wasn't going to push it into an NC17 (and if it was there were other scenes that could have been cut to get back to an R without negatively impacting the main character's believability).

Otherwise it was a really good film, and well worth the watch. Be sure to pay attention because there's a decent amount of foreshadowing, but not a lot of the typical American cinema hand holding about it.