Movie Reaction: Atomic Blonde

Formula: John Wick / Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Atomic Blonde is a stupid action movie that acts like a smart spy movie. I should leave it at that, but I won't because that's not what I do. In case you aren't familiar, Atomic Blonde is that movie with Charlize Theron kicking a lot of people's asses with an 80's New Wave soundtrack. You see, she plays an MI-6 agent in Berlin around the time that the Berlin wall fell. She's there to find a list that was stolen that has all the information about all the undercover operatives around the world (because that's a thing that has to exist in all spy movies). She teams up with the local head of operations in Berlin, played by James McAvoy, having a lot of fun playing in the dirt. Along the way, she meets an undercover French operative played by Sofia Boutella who she - uh - bonds with. So, this master list Theron's looking for. It's in a watch for some reason. There's also some bureaucrat who has the list memorized that she needs to protect. I'm not entirely sure how he has all that information memorized, nor do I understand how someone who doesn't seem all that high up in the ranks has access to all this information that several governments want a hold of. There's a lot of questions of who is working for who that will keep you guessing. Oh, and I did mention Charlize Theron fighting people? Good. What else? What else? ...I think that's the gist of it.

This is a thoroughly convoluted movie with a lot of moving parts. The whole thing is told in hindsight, Usual Suspects-style, with Theron reporting back to her superiors with her account of the events. It's a lot to keep track of. At least, it was for me. Granted, I get lost a lot in movies like this often. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy lost me in minutes, for example. If you are someone who sees these movies for the puzzle, you'll enjoy it.

I've seen a lot of comparisons made for this film. It's from one of the directors of John Wick, so that's an obvious one. Because it's about a badass woman, I've heard Lucy mentioned lazily. The super-spy element is very James Bond, and she's as sexual as he is too. The movie that in my mind it's most similar to is actually The Accountant. Both films feature an Oscar winning star of Reindeer Games in a role that has him/her efficiently fight a lot of people. They each have twisty plots that were more complicated than I cared to follow and involved the lead getting one over on his/her superior. For me, the big difference is that I saw The Accountant's twists coming. As I mentioned in that Reaction, that should never happen, because I suck at predicting twists. That's mostly because I don't care and am not looking for them, so when one is obvious to me, something has gone horribly wrong. Atomic Blonde surprised me more, but I wasn't all that invested to begin with.

Ok, so I've established that I didn't care about the spy intrigue. You know what I did like? The stunt work. Specifically, there's one [seemingly] continuous take toward the end that is Theron fighting her way through a building and into the streets. I don't believe for a second that it was actually all one take (and it wasn't as cleanly done as in, say, Birdman) and I don't care. It's still impressive as hell. I'm told that Theron did all of her own stunts, and I believe it. She is awesome. It's almost a shame that she spent so much of her career making Oscar-baity movies and playing the "attractive female 2nd-lead" in movies, when she could've been making more movies or this ilk or been Neo or something. Between Fury Road and this, I like where he career is going.

I didn't love Atomic Blonde. I certainly didn't hate it either. It was good, but a little too in love with how cool it was. It's hard to be against anything with Charlize Theron and James McAvoy at the center of it. The good parts (cast, stunts) outweighed the lesser parts (plot). It was quite violent, which I don't mind so much. There's much worse ways to kill a couple hours.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend