Movie Review: Atomic Blonde
Touted over and over as a female John Wick Atomic Blonde showed a lot of promise in early previews. The 80’s set comic adaptation doesn’t really rise to that claim. In fact, it kinda falls flat across the board.
Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is an undercover agent dispatched to Berlin toward the end of the Cold War. A fellow agent Broughton has history with was murdered and a crucial list of double agents is out in the underworld. Broughton makes contact with another British agent, David Percival (James McAvoy), and a French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella). The story becomes a web of who you can trust, who you can’t, and who is on what side. The search for the list goes deeper and the danger increases by the minute.
A very hostile cold opening introduces Broughton beaten and bruised. Her attitude never sells out the character and it’s clear from the start Charlize Theron is a badass actress. As the story unravels at a snail’s pace another thing about Theron’s acting ability becomes clear. She’s too good for this movie. In fact, it seems the entire cast is wasted on a script that just falls flat.
Credit where credit is due. Theron is great with accents, plays up the sensuality, and the bit of action that the audience is given is kick ass. Theron really threw herself into the training. So much so that the behind the scenes training videos are the best parts of the movie. By the time the action does roll around you’ll be too bored to care.
James McAvoy and Sofia Boutella do a lot of great supporting work. John Goodman’s role is little more than a cameo which is such a waste of immense talent. It’s clear the actors are treading water quickly as they can trying to keep the project afloat. Sadly there just isn’t enough substance to make it interesting.
Not only is the movie slow but Hollywood has an obsession with making Cold War era movies, cold, blue, and bland. There is a bit of contrast with neon lights when Atomic Blonde’s nightlife comes on the screen but a few shots to dress up the trailers can’t make up for the fact that the first third of the movie is a sleep inducing bore.
Putting the low light, low color, bits aside. The picture quality is at least sharp and the sound editing was good. A very 80’s soundtrack gives the movie something of a pulse to bridge the gap the story couldn’t quite fill.
Atomic Blonde suffers more from advertising misrepresentation than film making negligence. If you stumbled across the movie on Netflix with no preconceived notions it would probably be an acceptable watch. As it sits, as a theatrical release, it falls flat and disappoints despite the talented cast trying their best with a sleeper script.
Atomic Blonde: 2/5
