Atomic Blonde

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Based in 1989, during the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, 'Atomic Blonde' tells an "in-the-meantime" spy thriller - based on the graphic novel series, 'The Coldest City'.

The film opens with a KGB agent named Yuri Bakhtin who gets his hands on a special list, consisting of the names of every field active agent in the Soviet Union. Ten days after the event, Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), a top agent for MI6, is interrogated about her mission to Berlin, which recaps the events between the stealing of the list, and present day, and... it gets pretty bloody confusing from there. In my defense, however, I checked out a few reviews on line before getting into this, and it turns out I'm not alone.

The film is all about double agents and triple agents and figuring out who is who, and who are good guys, bad guys, etc. This movie does a pretty messy job of juggling things. So from my perspective, the story side of things is a bit of a blur. However, there's still a lot of good going on with the movie.

Most impressive to me was the fight choreography here. Those who know me know that I'm a sucker for that single-shot action sequence, because I like watching an action sequence FLOW instead of shaky-cam the shit out of my eyes. There's a bit of both going on here, mostly pretty smooth, but there is one particular action sequence that blew me away. It starts out in a stairwell, heads outside, and transitions seamlessly into a car chase. It's a good seven minutes of action, and the whole scene is one of the best-shot things I've seen this year.

As far as the acting goes, I'd have to say it's mostly solid. I had to hand it to James McAvoy though. He played an interesting character. You couldn't really tell whether he'd turn out good or bad in the end, as he had this dark sense of humor. I'd say watching him act was on par with watching Charlize Theron kick ass. It's a good balance for entertainment.

I have to say I enjoyed the overall style to this as well. The fight choreography was mentioned, but the look of it was interesting too, with dark shades coinciding with neon lights, making it look like a sort of "dirty 80's" film. On top of that, you had a good 80's soundtrack in the background. Some songs are remixed to sound a bit more industrial, and the original music wasn't at all common. They were songs you knew, but it wasn't Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" for the millionth time, for example.

This movie confused me as far as the whole plot was concerned, which unfortunately loses it quite a lot of points. However, it balances out the big screen experience with that overall interesting style, fight choreography and catchy soundtrack. And, if I'm honest, that massive fight scene really and truly made at least part of the movie amazing. If you like the idea of eye candy vs story, then by all means, pay full price to check it out. And hey, maybe you'll even be less confused than I was.

​3/5

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