Atomic Blonde, 2017.
Directed by David Leitch.
Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, and Sofia Boutella.
SYNOPSIS:
In the run up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, top MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is sent on a solo mission to the city. She’s charged with investigating the death of another agent but, more importantly, has to retrieve and smuggle out an invaluable dossier. She teams up with local agent David Percival (James McAvoy) to find her way through a maze of double-crossing.
Atomic Blonde is Charlize Theron’s film. She dominates it: you can count the number of times she’s not on the screen with the fingers of one hand. She did nearly all her own stunts – a few were ruled out because of insurance costs – and she injured herself while getting ready for the role. Plus, of course, she’s a producer. It doesn’t get more personal than this.
We all know she can do female action heroes and she’s turning it into her speciality. Her Furiosa in Mad Max Fury Road was one of the best things in a very good film and more recently she was the villain in Fast And Furious 8, although it was less of a stretch physically or as an actress. This time round the demands are pretty much all physical, with repeated fight sequences where she provides a soundtrack of grunts and shrieks that could have been borrowed from the noisier tennis players, high-speed car chases and large-scale action sequences. They follow each other in quick succession, making it miraculous that she has time to sprout all the bruises that we see early on.
It asks less of her acting skills. All she has to do is look great her in clothes – usually black and white – deliver her lines with maximum froideur and make smoking look sexy. The nicotine habit isn’t quite what you expect from a female role model but remember, this is Berlin in 1989 and attitudes to smoking weren’t what they are now. And, fortunately, Theron has more than enough screen presence to carry it all off.
She does more than hold her own against a succession of men sent to put a stop to her mission. But let’s go back to that idea of her dominating the film. Because there are times when she looks more like a dominatrix – the flash of black suspenders during one of the fight sequences, the coil of rope used as a whip and more – and the film starts to sniff ever so slightly of fetishism. Theron has a fling with naïve young French agent, Delphine (Sofia Boutella) which culminates in a gratuitous and superfluous love scene that seems to be designed to do little more than titillate.
The film doesn’t need the resulting slightly smutty feeling. It’s a distraction. To make up for it, however, the 1980s period retro feels authentic, with the neon chic of the nightclub, the Berlin Wall and its graffiti and the giant reel-to-reel tape recorder (remember them?) used to record an interrogation. Best of all is what seems to be a growing trend in current movies. A soundtrack of 1980s classics. England Is Mine has a great one and so does Atomic Blonde, kicking off with Blue Monday and continuing in the same vein.
It’s an efficient, entertaining, high-octane action thriller – a proper Friday night movie, complete with popcorn and your choice of beverage. And suspenders.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper. Follow me on Twitter, check out my movie blog and listen to my podcast, Talking Pictures.
Originally published August 7, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
