Movie Review: Move over, “John Wick”: Charlize Theron does her damndest to give “Atomic Blonde” a lethal kick of life.
The most surprising thing about “Atomic Blonde” — a goofy, smart-dumb bubblegum bloodbath that unfolds against the backdrop of a hyper-stylized 1980’s Berlin that could only exist in the mind of a fanboy — is that someone hasn’t thought to give Charlize Theron her own action movie franchise sooner. Sure, Theron suited up, took down baddies, and ran away from explosions in the regrettable sci-fi flick “Aeon Flux,” but how many people are chomping at the bit for a sequel to that one?
“Atomic Blonde,” on the other hand, is being touted as an explicitly Theron-first action vehicle — nevermind that the actress already proved her genre movie bonafides in the 2015 masterpiece that was “Mad Max: Fury Road”. The camera in “Atomic Blonde” comes to worship Theron, and we do too. With her icy blue eyes, cat-like cheekbones, and perfectly assembled arrangement of stunning peacoats and razor-sharp stilettos, Theron turns “Atomic Blonde’s” Lorraine Broughton into a new kind of movie spy: a New Wave goddess who’s not afraid of getting brain matter on her eveningwear.
Theron is far and away the best thing about “Atomic Blonde,” which is mostly a series of pulverizing, elegant set pieces strung together by a wafer-thin excuse for a plot. It’s the same old Cold War mish-mash about undercover operatives, shady black market dealings and, uh, prized government information stored away within the byzantine gears of a vintage stopwatch (I’m not being hyperbolic here; that’s literally one of the movie’s major plot points). It’s proudly brainless stuff, but it’s done with considerable virtuosic style, and Theron remains an action star for the ages. If we’re going for culinary metaphors, try to think of “Atomic Blonde” as a Fruit Loop Soufflé: it might be junk, but it’s junk presented with a surplus of flair and a delicious, mostly unpretentious retro attitude.
Another analogy: “Atomic Blonde” sometimes feels like a high-end fashion show, and not just because almost all the characters are decked out in eye-catching haute-scuzz designer garments. The visual language of “Atomic Blonde” suggests Nicolas Winding Refn by way of a high-end Vodka ad, and director David Leitch (one half of the coveted “John Wick” duo) has never met a gaudy neon light that he didn’t want to bathe his star actress in. The action scenes in “Atomic Blonde” are brutal and mesmerizing — so much so that it can feel like a bit of a drag when the models saunter off the stage and we’re forced to bide our time and wait until the next big show-stopping set piece (in other words, when Leitch takes a break from creatively-staged violence, and decides to kick the “plot” back into motion).
The movie’s “plot” never makes a lick of sense, and the script mostly exists as a haphazard string of threats, sex scenes and comic diversions to distract viewers in between bouts of bone-crunching. Still, this is an action movie with a genuine vision, and that’s something to be cherished in this deadening, franchise-dominated popular movie culture that we’ve become submerged in. This is the movie that a bratty gorefest like “Deadpool” wants so badly to be: a cynical, proudly adolescent exercise in pure visual pyrotechnics that aims to thrill and titillate. The difference is that “Atomic Blonde” largely succeeds at that last bit.
Director David Leitch cut his teeth on the beloved “John Wick” films with his partner Chad Stahelski, and the two clearly share an affinity for marrying European arthouse chic with American genre movie thrills. “John Wick’s” protagonist was an impeccably dressed hitman whose quest to avenge the death of his beloved pooch unfolded in a manner that suggested a more keyed-up, less melodramatic riff on the great John Woo bullet ballets of the late 80’s and early 90’s (“A Better Tomorrow”,” The Killer,” etc.).
“Atomic Blonde,” with its glittery glam trappings and Eurotrash baddies, often tips its cap to the unhinged work of the great action and science fiction filmmaker Luc Besson. The film also comes readily equipped with a perfectly curated selection of 80's New Wave and post-Disco tunes: everything from New Order’s “Blue Monday” to David Bowie’s “Cat People” gets a spin here. Seemingly taking a cue from “Baby Driver” director Edgar Wright, Leitch utilizes each of these iconic pop anthems to soundtrack scenes of dazzlingly choreographed carnage.
The primary difference in my aforementioned comparison is that “Baby Driver,” beneath its studiously cool movie-movie veneer, is a work of soulful genre reconstruction that boasts an undeniable human heart — even if its heartbeat often sounds like a synth-pop drum machine. “Atomic Blonde” isn’t so interested in humanity. It’s a film that is almost exclusively interested in kicking lots of ass and looking great while doing it. There are a great many films that wish to occupy this modest space in our culture, and in that regard, “Atomic Blonde” is a sturdy, watchable example of a formula you’ve seen many times before.
Some may call the movie’s aims shallow, but they’d be denying the allure that truly effective action films possess when they work overtime to distract us from the flimsiness of their story. “Atomic Blonde,” for all its flaws — the ungainly chunks of exposition that litter the narrative, the multiple endings — creates an authentic fantasy world that is nevertheless rooted in some recognizable element of our current reality. It’s not a film that will enlighten you as to the ugliness of our ongoing presidential catastrophe in America and you’re unlikely to learn anything about yourself while watching it. That said, if you’re into the idea of close-quarters combat scenes set to Flock of Seagulls jams, this silly movie may very well help to take your mind off our depressing national headlines.
Based off the minimalist graphic novel “The Coldest City,” “Atomic Blonde” toggles (somewhat awkwardly at first) between two separate timelines. In the present day, MI-6 agent Lorraine Broughton sits in an interrogation room with two snide, unsmiling intelligence officials, played with more gravitas than the parts require by Toby Jones and John Goodman. One of the first questions they ask her is one that will spur the movie’s breakneck story into motion: “what went wrong in Berlin?”
At this point, “Atomic Blonde” jumps back to the volatile, unstable time in East Germany just before the Berlin Wall was about to collapse. Not long after she arrives, Broughton is tasked by her superiors to retrieve a cachet simply known as “The List,” which is one of those extremely valuable miniature databases that bad guys always seem to be after in spy movies. In this case, The List that Lorraine has been tasked to retrieve that contains the names and information of every active agent in the Soviet Union. Also mixed up in this twisted parlor game are an MI-6 agent code named Spyglass (Eddie Marsan, working wonders with a nothing part), as well as an aggressive, reckless underground businessman named David Percival (James McAvoy, once again let off the leash after “Split”), who spends his idle hours hustling bootleg whiskey and reading porno magazines.
“Atomic Blonde’s” plot is a Frankenstein Monster stitched together from parts of other, more reputable tales of espionage and shadowplay. There are still attaché cases being handed off under dimly-lit underpasses and traitors executed by gunshot in the merciless, snowy German night. Our sexy-dangerous heroine even has a drink of choice (Stoli Vodka, on the rocks). Towards the end of the movie, in a cheeky bit of self-aware film nerd appropriation, Leitch throws in some archival footage of onetime MTV News host Kurt Loder pondering the virtues of sampling in popular culture to underscore the action: “is it art or is it stealing?”
In truth, “Atomic Blonde” wants to be both. It’s happy to crib from its influences, fashioning an alluring mélange of deliberately artificial and trashy-fun spy movie mayhem. And yet, the movie’s stubborn, art-student ambitions keep bubbling to the surface. These eccentric flourishes do admittedly clash with the movie’s often rote and schematic screenplay. “Atomic Blonde” is the kind of movie that might play great projected in a dim dive bar late at night — where you can focus on the majesty and ingenuity of the images and ignore the movie’s hare-brained expository exchanges and off-and-on attempts at “edgy” humor. If this sounds like a backhanded compliment, it’s not. The showdowns and fisticuffs in “Atomic Blonde” are more hard-hitting than most of what’s currently happening in American action cinema, even if the screenplay can’t always be bothered to prop up these sequences with meaning.
None of this would work without Theron’s fearsome commitment, and she’s 100% in in a role that acts as a showcase for her intense physicality. Indeed, Theron is one of the more somatic and commanding performers we have, and she doesn’t just dispense with brutality in “Atomic Blonde” — her gorgeous blonde frame takes a hell of a beating, leaving the audience frazzled and dazzled in equal measure. She’s the immaculate glacier of ice on which the rest of the movie rests, and her cool-cucumber composure keeps the whole wobbly enterprise more or less on track. I was less taken with McAvoy’s preening wild card: the actor seems to have fashioned his performance as a composite of self-consciously “tough” 90’s bad guy performances, which sounds fun on paper and is less so in practice. While the actor’s performance here certainly doesn’t lack for energy, McAvoy’s relentless gloating is tiresome when compared with his co-star’s more disciplined composure and grace.
Let’s face it, though: you didn’t buy a ticket to this movie for the “performances”. You bought a ticket to see Charlize Theron whoop unholy amounts of ass, and that is exactly what “Atomic Blonde” gives its audience. A live-wire cartoon standoff wherein Theron dangles from a length of rope that ends up accidentally choking a faceless goon to death is funny in a kind of “Looney Tunes”-on-crack way, even if Robert Rodriguez got there first in the feature-length version of his “Grindhouse” trailer, “Machete”.
The movie’s unforgettable piece de resistance is a jaw-dropping hand-to-hand staircase donnybrook between Theron and two German toughs that’s shot in one fluid, long take (film students will be able to see where the filmmakers chose to cut, but still). It’s a melee for the ages, recalling the unfiltered ferocity of “The Raid” movies, but somehow even loopier and more divorced from traditional reality. For action movie buffs who are understandably tired of the cuisinart, cut-every-second editing style of, say, the “Transformers” movies, the coherence of sequences such as this will come as a welcome relief. If the entirety of “Atomic Blonde” had possessed the fervor of this individual scene, we’d be talking about one of the best movies of the year.
Alas, this is not that movie. Instead, “Atomic Blonde” registers as breezy and fun, but ultimately forgettable. Its art movie allusions — a fight scene set against the backdrop of Andrei Tarkovsky’s immortal “Stalker,” a bold clash between the movie’s greyish-blue Berlin scenes and the colorful, psychedelic hues of its nightclub seductions and scenes of spy-movie brooding — are mostly window dressing for a familiar tale of flying fists and mistaken identities. Leitch’s film works best if you temper your expectations, and choose to look past the cumbersome plot and shoddy script to see “Atomic Blonde’s” extraordinary audio-visual virtues. If you can get past this hurdle, the movie’s a gas. And Theron truly is extraordinary: a whip-smart jungle cat in a platinum blonde ‘do and high heels that could pierce through your ribcage. And who says there can’t be a female James Bond? Grade: B.
