I'm just going to say this from the outset. People who don't like this film wanted it to be a certain way. Most often they complain that the two principals didn't have any chemistry. Clearly, these people wanted a romance to happen. When it didn't, they panned the film.

Had they been even slightly open-minded about this, they'd have figured out that this spy film was not going to find the "girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy" formula so often used in this genre.

In short, they didn't really watch the film. At some point, when that hackneyed formula failed to materialize, they stopped paying attention and decided it was a "bad film."

So let us address this now. The writer of the book that was used as model for the script is a former CIA operative. That means Jason Matthews might actually know something about current Russian foreign service people and their operating methods. This professional knowledge carries over into the movie.

The film is worth the watch precisely because it does not follow the "girl meets boy" formula. It is a film about coercion, survival, and revenge. Our former ballerina, now "sparrow," follows her own path and still convinces her superiors that she is not only a patriot, she's a very clever one. An agent worth of promotion and praise.

In her rise to the top, she "takes out" some of the people who put her in such an untenable position and, simultaneously, rises to a position of power in the Russian government. The "hook" is that we don't know quite how she pulls this off until the very end of the movie.

This is what makes the movie interesting to watch. Not that she's some very physically appealing woman who is easily taken, but that she's a very intelligent young woman who is dangerous when betrayed. Maybe this is what the negative reviewers really have a problem with.