"Atomic Blonde" review

Guaranteed to... satisfy your mind, anytime?

In 1989, amidst the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), is assigned to an investigation in Berlin in order to find a stolen list of UK operations that could torpedo the tenuous peace achieve by world governments and the Soviet Union.

Her investigation leads her deeper and deeper into a web of espionage and subterfuge so conniving that even the interests of her own employers are in question, forcing her to brutally tear down every end of the power struggle that she finds herself embroiled in.

The plot and mystery of “Atomic Blonde” is so thick that you often may find yourself asking if the titular MI6 spy’s investigation isn’t a self symbolizing metaphor for the filmmakers figuring out exactly what kind of movie they wanted to make.

I’m no stranger to bait and switch tactics and mismarketing so the revelation that “Atomic Blonde,” whose marketing relied so heavily on a level of tongue-in-cheek action B-movie kitsch that wasn’t even anywhere to be found in the footage that constructs the movie’s commercials and trailers, is actually a fairly dry, grounded and politically driven spy thriller punctuated only by a handful of brief but memorable action beats barely caught me by surprise in the slightest.

Where it left me scratching my head is how a movie with such overall strength in every territory of its craftsmanship manages to come out so average because of the weirdest identity crisis that it could have possibly found itself in.

“Atomic Blonde” strives to be a layered and true spyflick full of mystery, backstabbing, and clashing of philosophical ideologies against the backdrop of a sociopolitical conflict destined to shape an entire world of unsuspecting people.

To director David Leitch’s credit, he handles just about every territory with at least a bare minimum execution that keeps the entire ship afloat; the dialogue is dry but delivered with a conviction and cadence by the cast that makes their actual characters feel rather alive, as though reacting to their involvement through the lenses of their own unseen histories and the world’s edge of comic book stylization adds a nice visual spice to something that could have been sunken by taking itself far too seriously.

The real winner of this movie however, is of course, Charlize Theron, whose second career life as a viable action star is showing no signs of slowing. She treads the fine line between tortured and badass in ways some of her male contemporaries can rarely manage to pull off and after being subjected to the dramatic styling’s of Cara Delevigne last week, her performance was a much desired joy to behold on screen.

Even the camera manages to work in tandem with her performances, beating into the audience how unpleasant her life is through many a shot of her admittedly attractive body that never manages to feel sleazy because right when you think you’ve seen the worst scar she’ll receive in a lifetime, something new comes up that makes a Liam Neeson film protagonist look comparatively like a mall cop.

Between her and an excellent round of big names and character actors rounding out the cast with solid performances, “Atomic Blonde” is at its absolute strongest when its characters are leading the charge, which unfortunately leads to its ultimate downfall.

While I ordinarily understand the choice of a film to embrace over simplicity for marketing purposes  and applaud its desire to go above and beyond the place that it has been pigeonholed into for the sake of selling, this may be a rare circumstance where pursuing the marketed product might have actually been a better idea.

Too dense and detail driven to be a dumb action flick, yet not memorable or unpredictable enough to be a fully effective spy thriller, “Atomic Blonde” unfortunately sits at a crossroad in which its ambitions to be better are actively hampered by the capabilities of its creators’ skill sets.

As I mentioned earlier, the film is at its peak when the actors are running the show. Because of this, the dense and period specific plot in need of dumping exposition and staging scenes meant solely to spell out character allegiances regularly step on the toes of something that could have been a riot and a half were it more of a personal narrative. The movie even attempts to mitigate this by having the entire film play out as a debriefing narrated by Theron, whose details of events are even uses to take swipes at her listening superiors.

Scenes like this and director Leitch’s now stupendous eye for action ensure that the movie is never bad but couldn’t leave me escaping thoughts of how much better it could have been with a narrowed perspective and a 15 minute trim to the length because even though the mystery and political intrigue are never quite unserviceable, they never quite shine the way the movie does when its squarely about its characters on a mission.

I wish I didn’t need to be as harsh on “Atomic Blonde” as I am. What’s there that works, does so in spades and easily works well enough for a Saturday matinee. While it works decently enough though, it’s never easy seeing a film so well made come out to not quite equal the sum of its parts.

It hurts even more to see that it could have done so if it had merely tightened its priorities.

6 Blonde Bombshells out of 10