In a way, this feels like the natural end game in a longstanding struggle to prove that women can pull off the kinds of roles that have historically gone to men. Women being violent (and subjected to violence) onscreen isn't new, but it's usually been kept within the realm of niche and independent projects rather than big studio films. (Think Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) in Planet Terror , whose leg was sawed off and replaced with a machine gun.) It's fitting that Jennifer Lawrence, who hammered that point home when she was cast as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, a franchise that grossed roughly $1,451,538,526 over four years, would now be taking that extra step. Dominika Egorova, her character in Red Sparrow, isn't quite as brash as Lorraine Broughton in Atomic Blonde. As a prima ballerina, she's been trained to defer to traditional expectations of femininity. But when a series of circumstances leaves her unable to dance, she's forced into training as a Sparrow, an elite breed of Russian spies who use their bodies to manipulate the enemy and extract information. But though headlines have focused on Lawrence's choice to embrace nudity for the role, what I found most disquieting was the pervasive and overt quality of the violence.