Atomic Blonde

Year: 2017

Genre: Action

Directed: David Leitch

Stars: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, Toby Jones, James Faulkner, Roland Moller, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgard, Sam Hargrave, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, Til Schweiger

Production: Focus Features

Based on the graphic novel “The Coldest City” by Antony Johnston, Atomic Blonde is a tough, bruising, causally smart, infinitely stylish thriller that often times feels like the perfect palette cleanser for an abysmally boring blockbuster season. The film may be set in winter and its hard R-rating may steal away the coveted teen crowd but believe you, me, this thing is a rollicking summer movie attraction. It’s the kind of movie attraction that takes the best aspects of glamorized espionage thrillers and adds the pulpy distinctiveness of a Walter Hill movie. And you get Charlize Theron playing a stone-cold killer too? Man, why haven’t you bought your ticket yet?

The aforementioned Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, an MI6 operative sent on a recovery mission in Berlin circa 1989. Seems a list of every double agent on both sides of the iron curtain has fallen into the hands of a low-level Stazi agent and it’s now up to Broughton to bring him to the west. Aiding/obstructing her in this mission are a nest of spies from all corners, including MI6 field head gone native David Percival (McAvoy), CIA envoy Emmett Kurzfeld (Goodman), sultry French secret agent Delphine Lasalle (Boutella) a boatload of expendable KGB operatives thrown in, because who else would be the obvious bad guys?

Director David Leitch effortlessly builds on the film’s narrative to construct strong visual kinetics and retro-cool gildings that harkens back to a very explosive place, time and mindset. Whenever we’re given a respite from the film’s pulse-pounding action, we can drink in the psychology, the sociology and the history of a city torn apart for generations and for which the film cheekily insists is not what it’s about. Just like John Wick (2014) (which Leitch co-directed), the mis en scene is a mish-mash of tones, tunes and fashions but here the excess of cool is actually informing something.

I feel like I've seen this before only sh***ier

In all reality a movie of this stripe; i.e. a retrograde spy movie with a name actress playing a sexpot terminator, doesn’t need to do all this. Give me a few choice shootouts and a memorable villain saying “das vedanya,” and it’d be well worth its Salt (2010). But Atomic Blonde beats out the competition by being an absolute workhorse of cinematography, stunts and tactile special effects. Everything this cast and crew does is just that much harder to pull off and as a result, scenes like the 8-9 minute long-take are just that much better.

Of course the movie also doesn’t need to weave a web of deceit in the ballpark of a John le Carre novel, which is where the movie wonders into the tall weeds. Most of the story is told in flashback by Broughton to her handlers, post-operation. Halfway through the movie it becomes apparent that everyone’s lying - she’s lying, the handlers are lying, the characters in Broughton’s story are lying and the question remains is about what and why. It at times feels perfunctory and needlessly confusing especially when you consider the film has a set time-clock in the form of November 9, 1989 – the date the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. What’s the point in wrapping your head around names like “Spyglass” and “Satchel” when none of it will matter a month from the film’s events?

Gratuitous sex scene in three, two, one...

Okay, so maybe Atomic Blonde doesn’t have the makings of a true classic. But what it does well it does incredibly, exceedingly, near-impossibly well and offers no less than some of the most punishingly intense, wildly entertaining, hand-to-hand combat sequences since The Raid (2011). If you’ve been yawning all summer like I have, do yourself a favor and take a bracing ice bath with the rough-and-tumble, hard-nosed, Stoli drinking spies of Berlin. I promise you won’t regret it.

Final Grade: B