Movie #494: Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde is a spy/action thriller starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Sofia Boutella, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, and Roland Moller.

It's Berlin in 1989, a few days before the wall falls (not that the characters know that), and Berlin is hot. There's all kinds of spy shit going on, and MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) is sent in to investigate the death of another agent (Sam Hargrave) and retrieve a list of agents from a German defector (Marsan). Oh, and while there, hook up with a rogue agent called Percival (McAvoy) who's immersed himself in the crazy corruption of the Cold War.

What follows is a mostly standard spy flick, with all of the violence, sex, intrigue, and double-dealing you'd expect from a Cold War scenario. But Atomic Blonde is a bit more than that, because Charlize Theron is fucking amazing.

First, the fight scenes. The fight choreography is designed, to my eyes, to highlight the fact that Lorraine is taking on multiple opponents who are usually heavier and stronger than she is (remember, she's fighting KGB and Stasi, not random dudes). She relies on ambushes, quick strikes to vulnerable points, and using her opponents' weight against them. When she goes in for gun-fu, she takes headshots and it's clear that although she's highly skilled, she's fighting for her life. The apartment building scene is multiple fights in one continuous shot, and it's incredible.

Second, the love story. The agent that Lorraine goes in to find was, at one point or another, her lover. She doesn't reveal that, of course. She hooks up with a French intelligence officer named Delphine (Boutella) in Berlin, and they become lovers, and it's played completely naturally - no one comments about them being a thing, the fact that they're both women doesn't really come up. The fact that they're both spies comes up, and that's the main point of contention.

And indeed, Lorraine gets hit on and uses her looks to her advantage, but there's no "she has to prove herself to the boys in MI6" subplot. A Russian dude calls her a bitch, once, right before she kills him, but beyond that I didn't see a hell of a lot of misogyny for the sake of it (compare and contrast with The Man With the Golden Gun, which I just watched the other day, and has Bond slapping women around and other casual mistreatment of the female characters all the way through).

Oh, and the soundtrack is a great selection of 80s tunes, set in nice juxtaposition to the action scenes ("Father Figure" used as cover noise during a fight is a particular favorite; actually it occurs to me that most or all of the music in the movie is diagetic, which is also awesome).

The movie is based on a graphic novel, and I haven't read it, but I might well have to pick it up.

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium high

Next up: The Omen, I think, because we've already scheduled it, but we picked up a bunch of movies the other day