Atomic Blonde
/"Don't shoot, I've got your shoe!"
Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4
Spy films often let people live out their biggest fantasies: mainly saving the world and getting the girl while looking cool in the process. After twenty four James Bond films, four Jason Bourne films, and one Kingsman film it would be safe to say that males have been able to live out this fantasy adventure time after time but females have hardly ever been able to go on the adventure. Atomic Blonde, directed by David Leitch, gives females the spy they have been waiting for but is it worth the wait?
The Cold War is about to end, the Berlin Wall will soon fall, but that doesn’t stop KGB agents from getting information about the West. MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, played by Charlize Theron, is sent to Berlin to recover a list that contains the names of every active agent in the Soviet Union. Once in Berlin Broughton realizes that the biggest dangers could come from within and she most do anything to protect her identity from the Soviet Union.
Watching the film I had two very different reactions to what I was watching: the first being confused by the stupidity of the story that was being told; and the second being awe while watching the action mainly one scene that takes place halfway through the film. The amount of work that director David Leitch and cinematographer Jonathan Sela put into the nine minute unbroken action balooza is clearly shown and should be praised but sadly those nine minutes are the only moments of the film that the film feels alive. Sela has a habit for making movies look incredibly drab, with films like The Midnight Meat Train and Law Abiding Citizen, and with Atomic Blonde he proves that he sees the world in only grey tones. With all great action movies I would like to believe that the visual component of the film will rival the action that is being seen on the screen. Films like Mad Max: Fury Road, Skyfall, and John Wick: Chapter 2 show that films can be visually interesting and have breathtaking unique action. Having only one of those elements makes a film feel incomplete and Atomic Blonde definitely feels like a half baked film.
The script written by Kurt Johnstad, who also wrote Act of Valor and 300: Rise of an Empire, tries to be much more clever than it actually is. While Atomic Blonde is based off a graphic novel called The Coldest City, the entire point of having a screenwriter is to mine the original material for its best content and pull that with some original ideas to make a coherent engaging film. The story of Atomic Blonde will offer nothing new to anyone who has watched a spy film, Three Days of the Condor, Casino Royale, Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation the list goes on and on with films that offer more character development and twists than Atomic Blonde does.
I have been trying to convince myself that I liked Charlize Theron in this role. Theron has had such a rocky career with more misses than hits with me and Atomic Blonde performance has a lot more miss in it than hit. While I did enjoy seeing Theron do some of her own stunts, watching her smoke in almost every scene wears thin. Some might call that act sexy but I found the act repetitive and redundant. Theron made Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road one of the best characters of the year, bringing incredible pain to a character without revealing any of her backstory with dialogue, with Atomic Blonde Broughton is suppose to have the same painful baggage that Furiosa has but you never feel it. For the most part it felt like Theron was falling asleep during the scenes where she is suppose to be emoting which was leading me to complete boredom during the film. Also before anyone calls me a misogynist I found James McAvoy to be rather bland in this film too. Just because you can smoke a cigarette doesn’t mean you are the world’s most dangerous spy, the film might want you to believe that but have some actually logic that goes with these idiotic notions.
Atomic Blonde creates one of the biggest cinema sins: style over substance. If you enjoy a film that has characters that you can root for or against and has a plot that is engaging and will keep you on the edge of your seat Atomic Blonde isn’t meant for you. If you enjoy a story about East meeting West, Atomic Blonde is definitely not the film for you. However, if you enjoy a film that offers some great action that you mostly would see in a video game then Atomic Blonde is the film for you. For myself Atomic Blonde was much more of a dud than an explosion rocking my world.
Rating: Skip It
-Jonny G