Atomic Blonde | Little White Lies

Atom­ic Blonde

28 Jul 2017 / Released: 09 Aug 2017

Words by Matt Thrift

Directed by David Leitch

Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, and John Goodman

A woman with platinum blonde hair and a fringe, wearing a black halter-neck top and holding a cigarette, against a dimly lit, red-tinted background.
A woman with platinum blonde hair and a fringe, wearing a black halter-neck top and holding a cigarette, against a dimly lit, red-tinted background.
4

Anticipation.

One half of the duo behind John Wick goes solo. And with Charlize Theron in tow.

2

Enjoyment.

The staircase fight...

2

In Retrospect.

...is all there really is to see here.

Char­l­ize Theron blasts her way through Cold War-era Berlin in this glib action­er from John Wick’s David Leitch.

It takes some balls for a film so sore­ly lack­ing in ideas of its own to cut to a TV screen on which a pre­sen­ter asks, Sam­pling: is it art, or is it just pla­gia­rism?” A wink­ing acknowl­edge­ment of hav­ing lift­ed an umbrel­la-assist­ed assas­si­na­tion attempt from Alfred Hitchcock’s For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent? Of hav­ing wheeled-out David Bowie’s Cat Peo­ple’ again for the first in an end­less parade of 80s juke­box crutch­es? Of pil­lag­ing the Nico­las Wind­ing Refn look book in a bid to ele­vate a try-hard style cribbed from Guy Ritchie?

It bodes well for fans of Dead­pool that Atom­ic Blonde’s direc­tor, David Leitch, is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the sequel, giv­en the sim­pati­co lev­els of glib­ness on dis­play here. As one half of the duo behind John Wick, a film of whose dis­til­la­tions Jean-Pierre Melville would be proud, Leitch seemed well-appoint­ed for an action-fuelled romp through the dying gasps of the Cold War. But while John Wick dealt in reduc­tion, it retained essen­tial ingre­di­ents, cast­ing an instant­ly icon­ic genre-sil­hou­ette through judi­cious­ly-appoint­ed strokes.

Atom­ic Blonde sim­i­lar­ly deals in arche­type, even as it fudges the bal­anc­ing-act between essence and one-dimen­sion­al­i­ty. From thin­ly-sketched char­ac­ters to an obvi­ous (and unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­vo­lut­ed) right old Le Car­ré-on of a plot, there’s lit­tle here to trou­ble the pulse between action beats.

In that depart­ment at least, Leitch finds sur­er – if by no means con­sis­tent – foot­ing. An ear­ly dust-up that sees Char­l­ize Theron armed with just a length of hosepipe and George Michael’s Father Fig­ure’ evinces his long list of stunt cred­its, if hard­ly a nat­ur­al director’s eye for space and move­ment (more ably demon­strat­ed by for­mer part­ner-in-prime, Chad Sta­hel­s­ki with John Wick: Chap­ter 2). Things improve with a fight played-out in a cin­e­ma screen­ing Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalk­er, fisticuffs lit­er­al­ly tear­ing through the fab­ric of the screen for a wit­ty irrup­tion of its tran­scen­dent finale.

Two people walking down a graffiti-covered alley, the woman wearing a black coat and the man wearing a brown jacket.

Tow­er­ing above all else though, is a set-piece that sin­gle-hand­ed­ly res­cues the film. A hand­held, sin­gle-shot mano-a-mano tus­sle that begins on a stair­case, enters an apart­ment and seam­less­ly segues into a car chase. The sequence is an island in the film; shorn of music and dis­grace­ful­ly styl­ish, it seems to come from anoth­er film entire­ly – from anoth­er direc­tor, even.

Merg­ing the hyper-vio­lent tac­til­i­ty of The Raid or Uni­ver­sal Sol­dier: Day of Reck­on­ing to Vic­to­rias one-take won­der, it’s as ele­gant as Tony Jaa’s reverse-tra­jec­to­ry stair­case assault in The Pro­tec­tor, albeit with an enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly-blood­ied grub­bi­ness. As wit­ty in con­cep­tion as exe­cu­tion – Eddie Marsan swing­ing into frame, tap­ing up a wound is price­less – one feels the cost of the fight, and feels for Theron, like nowhere else in the film.

As Lor­raine Broughton, the spy brought in from the cold of late-’80s Berlin, Theron is in her ele­ment. Not that she’s giv­en much to work with by way of char­ac­ter. Leitch’s across-the-board approach is pure­ly cos­met­ic, ever-ready to eschew shades of detail when crass short­hand will suf­fice. Whether it’s a T‑shirt with BOY’ embla­zoned across the front for Theron, or yet anoth­er tire­some pop-cul­tur­al sig­ni­fi­er, his direc­to­r­i­al hand is one blunt instrument.

No one could doubt Theron’s cre­den­tials fol­low­ing her turn as Imper­a­tor Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. If any­one is at the van­guard of empow­ered, female-dri­ven action cin­e­ma, it’s sure­ly her. If only she had more to feed on than Atom­ic Blonde’s emp­ty calories.

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