Movie Review: Atomic Blonde (2017)

Summary: An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.

Pros:

Cast and Characters. There are a lot of characters. The other agents John Goodman, Toby Jones, some of the villains and other characters. They’re all good in their roles but none of them are really standouts at least in the way the three I am going to talk about are. Or at least, not as important.

• Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton. She is a top level MI6 agent, her story starts as she is being debriefed and is narrating the past events. Lorraine at this time is a weathered agent, someone who has obviously returned after being fed to the lion’s den (something like she says). She can definitely fight her butt off and she loves her clothes. She wears some bomb coats. I think Lorraine is interesting in some of the things she does, it’s hard to know what she’s doing it for exactly. Does she actually care or is it all a farce? I think Charlize Theron is a great actress, she’s beautiful and she is a commanding presence on screen no matter what. I also think her British accent is usually very good, however, I thought it was kind of not as good as it normally is but maybe that was part of the character…. dunno. Anyway, I feel like she such a great job that she almost transcends the writing of her character to be honest.

• James McAvoy as David Percival. I definitely think he was the standout in the film. I love him so much, he is such a great actor. His character was also very interesting. You never knew what you were going to get with him. Whose side is he on? Does he fight for himself? David is supposed to be Lorraine’s contact when she gets to Berlin and it’s seen right away that she does not really trust him. I mean who would. But James McCoy is so good at that he makes you love him, but he also makes you hate him.

• Sofia Boutella as Delphine Lasalle. I’m glad that she was such a standout in Kingsman that she has gotten bigger roles. I definitely wondered about her a bit in the beginning when we first see her show up. I thought her character was interesting and she was good in the role of being a bit innocent compared to the jaded Lorraine and David. She was good in her part, it was small but she was good for what she had.dd

The Fight Scenes. There are some good action scenes in this film, but there is one that I believe was one take and it was so tense. Lorraine is trying to keep someone safe and it starts off with two goons, she fights them and she is kicking butt and they are kicking her butt. More and more goons come and she just keeps taking names, but they are definitely getting licks in. Oh man, I was alert for that scene, it was so tense that I perked up and was wide awake.

The Soundtrack. This film is set in the late 80s, and all of the music is 80s music, some are covers and I really enjoyed them. I also really liked how they were used in the film. The song paired with the stylized opened credits was great.

The Cinematography. I thought this film look really good, it’s set in Germany in the 80s, so it’s very stylized and it looks like it was lifted right from that time period. It was very cold looking and crisp.

The Direction. I liked a lot of the different shots. There are moments while Lorraine is walking that the camera would spin around her, or it would be flipped upside down, and especially the one take fight. I always think that’s impressive, especially during fights scenes. It helps make it tense and gets me into the fighting.

Cons:

Really Slow. My goodness this movie starts off really slow. It feels like a glacial pace. We get a flashback, then it cuts to “10 days Later” and the story gets started but I was waiting for it to pick up. There was a lot of exposition in the beginning and I was bored.

The Walking Scenes. There are a lot of scenes of Lorraine walking to places, walking into rooms and I started to get irritated after a while. Obviously, Charlize Theron is very beautiful, she also used to be a model so she knows how to walk, and walk she did… a lot… into a lot of places.

Convoltued. One of the weakest aspects of this film is definitely the story. It wasn’t hard to get or to really follow, it was just a lot. I’m not going to spoil the story or anything, but so many people had their own agendas, their parts in the whole story that I really didn’t care about the story by time the movie was over.

Overall, I wanted to like Atomic Blonde a lot more than I did. I was bored for a majority of the film, it’s not bad but it’s just not really interesting. There’s a lot going on. I thought the acting all around was very good, the cinematography was good, the soundtrack was fun and engaging and I think there was some great direction choices and I think that James McAvoy was a great standout in the film. The action scenes were tense but the one take scene was the best one in the film, Charlize Theron was amazing in them. On the other hand, I think this film is very slow, especially in the beginning, the story is convoluted, there’s a lot going on and it feels like at times the movie forgets what the main point is due to everything going on. There are also some silly extra scenes that pad the film and do nothing other than show off Charlize Theron’s model walk.

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars. 

Have you seen Atomic Blonde?

What is your favorite Charlize Theron film?

What is your favorite film featuring a strong female action lead?