I’m told there were “lots of walk outs” during Monday night’s Red Sparrow premiere at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. Alice Tully Hall was packed when the film started, less so when the lights came up. One patron overheard while exiting: “Disgusting.” The guy who tipped me says “maybe Russia should have hacked the screenplay.”

All this means, of course, is that older, wealthier folks (younger, poorer types don’t attend posh movie premieres as a rule) are finding Red Sparrow a bit harsh, which was pretty much my reaction.

Jennifer Lawrence before Monday night’s Lincoln Center premiere of Red Sparrow.

From 2.16 HE review: “This is not, to put it mildly, a double-agent film with the finesse and subtlety of, say, Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65), which was regarded as a rather cold-hearted piece when it opened a half-century ago.

“The focus on cruelty in Red Sparrow makes that John Le Carre adaptation seem rather mild in this regard. At every turn Sparrow says ‘try a little heartlessness.’

“Red Sparrow is more in the realm of Atomic Blonde, the period (late ’80s) spy film with Charlize Theron, minus the gymnastics. It’s an aggressively sexual thing, I mean, but is mainly about all kinds of physical brutality, including a pair of attempted rapes and two especially savage beating-and-torture scenes that would, in the real world, result in God-knows-how-many-weeks in a hospital.”