There’s a grizzled, handsome blankness that Edgerton brings to his roles that keeps him from popping off the screen. Case in point: It’s hard to remember anything he specifically does in Red Sparrow. His performance is good - perfectly good - but nothing more. The actor’s Edgerton-ness continues in Red Sparrow, where he plays Nash as a smart, dedicated American spy who wants to save Dominika from the clutches of her evil Russian handlers. He was so unmemorable as Uncle Owen in those Star Wars prequels that he never really registered. I’ve been a fan of his since seeing him in Animal Kingdom, the great 2010 Australian crime thriller - but it’s part of Edgerton’s problem as an onscreen presence that, in fact, I’d actually seen him years earlier in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Once I hop onto IMDb, then my memory gets jogged: Oh right, Zero Dark Thirty, Loving, It Comes at Night, Black Mass, The Gift… And yet, it always takes me a minute to remember what those movies were. Joel Edgerton is a good actor who is also completely forgettable.Įdgerton has been in many good movies, and he often gives very good performances. Don’t they teach you that in spy school? #2. In real life, though, he’d be too freaked out by what the pool would do to her dye job to be allured. Oh yeah, that’s something else Dominika does: She swims at the same pool as Nash to spark his interest. “For the men who have never had at-home-hair-dye disasters,” she advises, “here are some tips: You can’t successfully bleach your hair blonde with store-bought box dye long and/or thick hair requires multiple boxes you cannot, under any circumstances, go swimming in a chlorinated pool after you bleach.” Village Voice film critic April Wolfe spent part of her review actually explaining what’s incorrect about that cinematic shorthand. I’ve never tried changing my hair color, but spy films always make it look really easy - just pour the stuff on your head and, presto, you’re suddenly a blonde or brunette. As part of that process, she has to do something you see a lot in the movies: She colors her hair using some product she buys at the store. In Red Sparrow, Lawrence plays Dominika, a Russian ballerina who becomes a spy assigned to seduce an American agent, Nash (Joel Edgerton). Never try dyeing your hair like characters do in movies. Here are a few other takeaways from Red Sparrow: #1. Deep down, she still seems like that young woman from Kentucky who can’t quite believe all this crazy fame has happened to her. You can argue that Lawrence’s real-girl demeanor is its own kind of mystique - or shtick - but it doesn’t feel manufactured to me. And her announcement on Marc Maron’s podcast that she switched off the acclaimed Phantom Thread after three minutes: “I’m sorry to anybody who loved that movie. … I mean, is it just about clothes? Is he kind of like a narcissistic sociopath, and he’s an artist, so every girl falls in love with him because he makes her feel bad about herself, and that’s the love story?” There was the lovably goofy faux-royalty wave she was rocking before one of the film’s premieres. But I loved seeing her doing promotion for it. Lawrence is back out on the road to bang the drum for Red Sparrow, her very mediocre spy thriller that I remember almost nothing about. It probably didn’t help that she was doing this when she greeted them: Abrams at a party and realizing, to her humiliation, that they had no idea who she was. I don’t care if I look bad.” In 2016, she told a great story on The Graham Norton Show about going up to Harrison Ford and J.J. When she was on Seth Meyers last year to promote Mother!, she took a swig of wine that he had provided, slumped back in her chair and declared, “I can’t sit up straight up anymore. This is a woman who famously face-planted while walking up the steps to accept her Best Actress prize - the highest honor in her profession - and then just laughed it off, jokingly telling the crowd, which gave her a standing ovation, “You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell, and that’s really embarrassing, but thank you.”īut she has plenty chill no matter the occasion. Her performances are often terrific, but even when her films aren’t memorable, her public appearances always are. Lawrence grew up in Kentucky, and no matter how glamorous she’s gotten, she’s retained an understanding that, deep down, celebrity is kinda stupid. Ever since 2010’s acclaimed indie Winter’s Bone, Jennifer Lawrence has been an actress who’s split the difference between Hollywood glamour and dorky, Midwestern self-effacement.
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