Red Sparrow is not great but it blows Atomic blonde out of the water. With the exception of a small 15 minute window in the middle, I found Atomic Blonde to be a long tedious directorial misstep and desperate wanna-be music video. Red Sparrow lacks some of the better action moments and has a chemistry-free romantic offering but it has far more cohesive writing and directing. I expected it to be terrible but it turned out to be OK (not very good, but just OK). I was feeling occasionally blistered by Lawrence's vacillating rusky accent (at times admirable) when I realized that my fondness for Irons had made me overlook his 80/20, British/Russian accent. So I give Lawrence a bit more credit. I am not an Edgerton fan but he was respectable in this. It managed to escape certain cliches of the genre but wallowed in others. My low expectations certainly helped me enjoy it.

Red Sparrow: 6/10 Atomic Blonde: 3/10 (with a glimpse of 8/10 within)

I didn't mind it but unlike Horus, I found Atomic Blonde to be certainly more entertaining with a higher degree of action.

That said though, Jennifer Lawrence is better to look at and her nude scene is enough reason to make me want to watch Red Sparrow again, or at least that scene alone.

Charlize just doesn't give me that aggressive a boner but her role had a lot more going on in the violence department as opposed to the clever espionage and whatnot.

So... I finally watched this... I tend to agree with your assessments, but I have yet to watch Atomic Blonde...

Atomic Blonde FTW. It was much more fun, funny, fast paced, and stylized. The hallway fight alone makes it better than Red Sparrow, which wasn't awful or anything but was way too long and a bit of a slog to get through.

And as for JL's nude scene, if I wanted to see a naked white girl there are plenty on the internet. Not that JL is ugly or anything but I've seen half a dozen women working the checkout counter at Target who, with the right hair/make-up/clothes would look much better than JL.

I would say that JL is currently more attractive than Theron but Theron makes me care about her characters more no matter how she looks. I don't want to have sex with Furiosa but I care way more about her character than all of JL's characters put together +10. Lorraine Broughton from Atomic Blonde is a great character I want to see again. I've already forgotten what JL's character's name was in Red Sparrow and I just saw it an hour ago.

Wow! I gotta shop at Target more.

@RickJohn57 said:

Wow! I gotta shop at Target more.

Not to be an A-hole but the vast majority of Hollywood actresses look like average women without the makeup, clothes and hair stylists. You can quite literally take a decent looking girl in her late teens or 20s, give them access to the same makeup/clothes/hairdressers as these actresses and will probably look stunning.

The difference for me is can they make me care about them in a movie or TV show? JL rarely if ever does. She always looks bored out of her mind.

Atomic Blonde was a lot better. Atomic Blonde is just a fun action ride start to finish. It's not a movie that was looking to win any awards or anything. This movie tries too hard to be serious and for the most part it is really boring.

@Horus Mazinga said:

I was feeling occasionally blistered by Lawrence's vacillating rusky accent (at times admirable) when I realized that my fondness for Irons had made me overlook his 80/20, British/Russian accent.

OT, but I found nearly all the "Russian" accents completely annoying. It reminded me of the early days of television when white men played native americans...so distracting!

BTW, I'm off to check out Atomic Blonde...for all my complaining I found this film's story fairly compelling.

So I checked out Atomic Blonde...apples and oranges from where I sit. Other than the obvious comparisons of a female lead and being cold war spy films, they have nearly nothing in common. For my taste, Atomic Blonde was a truly awful experience with lots of hyper-stylized violence and a conflated storyline ultimately leading to a lukewarm "twist". Red Sparrow was a far more grounded and character driven film that was far more engaging. Neither are going to change the world, but I'd take Red Sparrow every time.

Atomic Blonde.

Red Sparrow was better than I expected. It had a better story than AB but AB was aesthetically much more interesting. Red Sparrow was very blandly made. And creative aesthetics tend to interest me more.

AB definitely had it's flaws. The story was a bit of a mess. But it's easy to overlook certain problems when a film has that much style. An excellent combination of sound and images. A graphic novel brought to life. Style over substance? Maybe. But sometimes, I just wanna watch something cool.