Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde

(2017)

Directed by: David Leitch
Written by: Kurt Johnstad, based on the 
graphic novel "The Coldest City" by 
Antony Jonston & Sam Hart
Starring: Charlize Theron, Sofia Boutella, 
James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones
Rating: 14A
Release Date: July 25, 2017

Charlize Theron explodes with rage in Atomic Blonde 
Image Source

     Charlize Theron has always been a stone cold outsider within the plastic Hollywood system of filmmaking. Breaking onto the scene in her third film as the bubbly Tina in Tom Hanks' underrated That Thing You Do! to playing a seemingly schizophrenic wife in the bombastic The Devil's Advocate or a animal rights advocate in Mighty Joe Young she has always starred in different, challenging roles. While not all of her films have been that great, (one would be hard pressed to call 15 Minutes, Reindeer Games, or Trapped 'good'), even her performances in the  clunkers have at the very least been interesting; anything she's in, she usually ends up elevating the material. Faced with a good script and director, she's done career defining work in The Cider House Rules, Monster, and the explosive Mad Max: Fury Road, where her Imperator Furiosa character ended up stealing the film from Tom Hardy's titular Max. As a viewer, and likely a director or producer there's one guarantee with a Charlize Theron film - it won't be boring. Personally, too, she's brilliant and versatile; according to the Internet Movie Database, English is her second language, (behind her native Afrikaans), she's dealt with the trauma of witnessing her mother shoot her alcoholic father in self-defense as a teenager; and on growing up in South Africa, Theron said;

     "I got older [and] I started realizing that I had a lot of anger; there was a lot of unresolved stuff--apartheid, health care, AIDS, poverty--that still very much affects me . . . It makes you realize that the circumstances of your formative years, it leaves a real scar--it marks you. It's the one thing that gets me really angry, really emotional. It's a lot of fucking suffering, and unnecessary suffering."

When the news broke that Theron was producing an action/spy-thriller with a heroine at it's center, I was thrilled to see what this strong, independent and thoroughly talented woman would have to offer. Aside from a few hiccups, Atomic Blonde doesn't disappoint.
     Atomic Blonde follows Lorraine Broughton, (Charlize Theron), a spy for MI-5, who is tasked with infiltrating the web of Russian spies within the eastern bloc of Berlin just days before the Berlin Wall was torn down, (The Berlin Wall has a fascinating and tragic history worth looking into). Although her task seems simple - enter East Berlin, get a secret spy list, and rendezvous with her MI-5 contact - nothing ever is. Double and triple crosses, greed, compassion, love, hate and brutal violence all rear their head during Broughton's tenure in the cold side of Berlin, and it's not until the final frames of the film that the audience truly knows what's going on, and who is really safe.
     Overall, Atomic Blonde is generally a typical, post-Bourne spy thriller, under the directorial eye of John Wick's David Leitch, (who was a superbly talented stunt coordinator before moving to straight up directing). The only difference is that it features an unabashedly female lead. In one of the first scenes of the film, Theron is totally nude - yet it's not sexual. She's bruised, battered and broken, and her face looks like it's been through a meat grinder. Awash in a tub full of ice water, the audience can tell she's been through the ringer - and lived to talk about it. It's almost as if the film is daring the viewer to sexualize the scene under threat of being beaten up by the menacing Theron. Jumping to the next scene, we realize we're seeing her story through her lens, as she tells it to her MI-5 superior Eric Gray, (Toby Jones), and CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld, (John Goodman). This creates an interesting dualism; first, that the audience is being told a story by an unreliable narrator who is biased to her own experience, and second, that the audience is experiencing the story through a female perspective via Broughton. Throughout the film, there are elements of her unique, (at least in terms of cinema), viewpoint. James McAvoy's greasy David Percival is somewhat of a ladies man, drunk on his own ego, who seems interested in Broughton, is denied by Broughton, who treats their working relationship as just that - completely professional. As well, it's interesting to see Broughton fall in love with French spy Delphine Lasalle, (Sofia Boutella), another woman, and have the cinematic eye treat it as just another normal relationship, like one might see in Bond with a 'Bond Girl.' It's not revolutionary in reality, but seeing it on screen in a big budget hollywood picture is pretty damn refreshing. So too, is the action.
      In countless classic films, there's usually a 'damsel in distress' character; every pre-90's Disney film ever, Bond, Bourne, Titanic, Gone With the Wind, hell, even Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, (2.78 Billion), featured a white dude having to save his alien girlfriend and an entire race of people. I mean, I'm a heterosexual white male, so I'm not complaining, I lucked out, in that pretty much everything in the world is centered around my perspective. But I see that day in and day out - when a film challenges our perspectives, our views, how we see and experience the world, it might occasionally be scary or uncomfortable, but damn if it isn't refreshing and interesting. When you see the same thing over and over again, like eating a loaf of Wonderbread over a week - it becomes old, crusty and stale. Seeing Theron's Blonde light up the screen like the her character's eponymous nickname is like watching a brand new, brash, bombastic and colorful fireworks show. Her athleticism, skill, and realistic fighting style is simultaneously brutal, beautiful and impressive. It's not like she's superhuman either; one of the best scenes of the film features her fighting a man a foot taller than her, and they both beat the living hell out of one another, falling down more than once from exhaustion and injury. It's because of both Broughton's quick wit and physical capability that she can outwit her would-be killers. These scenes, centred around a neon-soaked, (almost neon-noir), milieu that bounces up and down to an absolutely killer 80's soundtrack, are downright exciting. As well, dazzling cinematography that's akin to John Wick as seen through the eye of Birdman's Alejandro G. Iñárritu, make Atomic Blonde more of an experience than just a film. That's not to say it doesn't have it's problems.
      Aside from a few exceptions, almost all first time directors make goofy first films. They're the cinematic equivalent to training wheels. James Cameron made 1982's Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, Spielberg made the campy Duel, Oliver Stone wrote Conan the Barbarian, David Fincher did the atrocious Alien 3, (and has since disowned it), and even the severely underrated Kathryn Bigelow made the absolutely entertaining but totally stupid Point Break before moving onto more relevant pictures. With Atomic Blonde, Leitch does a decent job at making the pieces fit together, but it's more like he's jamming puzzle pieces that don't quite fit instead of taking the time to put everything in it's place. Even with Theron producing, it's too bad the studio couldn't get a director like Bigelow, Ava Duvernay, or even Nicolas Winding Refn to release their Atomic Blonde. For his first film as the sole director, Leitch fares better than most, but honestly, Theron deserves better. As well, it's an interesting choice to have a white male direct a picture that has seemed to market itself as a feminist movie, and, as I've heard from a few people who have also seen the film, the "male gaze" tends to creep into the picture a multitude of times.
      Additionally, the other big name behind the scenes is writer-adaptor Kurt Johnstad. Known for the 300 films and the well intentioned, but plain dumb Act of Valor, Johnstad seems out of his depth. The film cries out for Le Carre-esque intrigue, but is usually served up as either bond-lite or 300 in drag. That isn't to say Johnstad's script is bad, no, it just hits a few too many wrong notes at the right time for the audience to notice; the film drags for the first half, and the dialogue is at times confusing, overwrought, or way too short, sounding more like a first draft than a polished script. However, Johnstad does do an astounding job at building up the story, plot and characters to knock them down in the finale, which features some of the best action sequences, a wondrous single take,* and plot twists on plot twists to make up for the script's shortcomings. It's worth sitting through the first half of the film if only to experience the orgy of ballet-like violence that concludes it.
     Finally, the worst part of the film is a small one - cigarettes. In nearly every scene both McAvoy and Theron's characters have a lit cigarette hanging out of the sides of their mouths. They're smoking post-accident, during a fight, mid-espionage, or while running for their lives. I don't mind smoking in films - people did smoke back in the day, and while I find it pretty gross in real life, I won't deny it can look cool as hell. But the amount of huffing and puffing in Atomic Blonde goes from realistic, to satirical, to disgusting, to being so distracting I had a hard time suspending my disbelief. It took me out of the cinematic experience a few times.  So much so, that I wondered if the cigarette companies have gone back to their old advertising methods of paying actors to smoke in movies.
     In closing, Atomic Blonde has it's issues; a talented but too eager director, a so-so script, pacing issues, and elements like cigarette smoking that are so over the top, it nearly ruins whatever realism the film has going for it. That being said, a kickass female heroine, a finale that rivals some of the best action films I've ever seen, brilliant acting by a well rounded cast, and the fact it's at least trying, (and more often than not, succeeding), in showcasing a female cinematic perspective, make Atomic Blonde one cinematic mushroom cloud you'll want to witness.

GRANT'S RATING: 3.5/5

Atomic Blonde clip: "Father Figure"

     

*Although it appears to be a single take, the fight sequence is actually "40 separate shots seamlessly stitched together."