There are flashes of a good, subversive and genuinely adult spy thriller buried beneath a dour layer of incredibly slow, self-serious monotony and it's kind of a shame since the promising ideas, occasional uncomfortable moments and outbursts of painful violence all point to a piece that slots into a gap in the market for a mature, slightly difficult blockbuster of this sort. Unfortunately, 'Red Sparrow (2018)' falls into the trope-laden pitfalls of its genre on multiple occasions and always lets its forced-feeling, yet seemingly obvious, downbeat tone get in the way of its overly long, overly complicated story and that's why it just isn't all that entertaining. That, and the fact that it becomes genuinely boring when it feels like it's been on for far longer than its already stretched 140 minutes. 6/10