Movie Review: Charlize Theron Gets Her Own "John Wick" With "Atomic Blonde"

You either want to watch Charlize Theron dismantle German cops with cruel efficiency while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares over a boombox, or you don’t.

If you’re in the latter camp, I can’t help you. No one can, really.

If you’re among the former, may I point you in the direction of Atomic Blonde, director David Leitch’s gorgeous-looking, utterly empty follow-up to John Wick?

Of course, if you’re after anything beyond Theron skillfully and bloodily battling countless assailants, Atomic Blonde won’t satisfy. It’s an asskick-delivery service, and nothing more.

(NB: David Leitch did not helm John Wick Chapter 2, which set a new standard for operatic hitman movies led by unkillable heroes; a bar Atomic Blonde fails to cross.)

Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, MI6’s most brutal and presumably blondest secret agent. In the lead up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, she arrives in Germany to bring home the body of a dead colleague. There, she meets MI6’s Berlin-based operative, David Percival (James McAvoy: still unhinged, still buzzed), and her suspicious spy-dy sense begins tingling. Same goes when she notices a Frenchwoman, Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella), surveilling her. Lorraine decides to stay in West Berlin—before moving over to the East—to figure out why MI6 agents keep getting killed, and to find the mole in their midst.

The year is 1989, so that means taping actual microphones and cassette-recorders to her body. It also means a soundtrack featuring Falco, A Flock of Seagulls and ‘Til Tuesday. What a time to be a spy.

Shot by Jonathan Sela in vivid, high contrast colour, and set-dressed to perfection, Atomic Blonde is lovely to look at. Yet Kurt Johnstad’s screenplay, adapted from graphic novel The Coldest City, lays it on pretty thick. Whatever cinematic conventions were being twisted by the comic have been flattened out in the translation to the screen, resulting in leaden dialogue and an utterly baffling narrative. It helps to have thesps like Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones and John Goodman reciting the script in their supporting roles, though not much.

(Inglourous Basterds’ Til Schweiger’s in this too, making this his second film to use David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” in a montage where a woman gets dressed. I’m not sure what that note adds to this review, but I feel like it had to be documented in writing. And if not here, where?)

Theron, also a producer, can’t be faulted for seeing this as a perfect vehicle for her dual talents of appearing icy cool and having a banshee’s vigour in the throes of combat. It’s her own private John Wick.

Leitch rewards her with a few stunning action set pieces. Best of all is the final act’s show-stopping spree, in which she ascends a staircase to take out decreasingly-killable Stasi officers, getting visibly bruised in the process, before fleeing out the front door, into a car, and through the streets. For almost ten minutes, Leitch and Sela create the illusion that the camera never cuts, and the seemingly-unbroken sequence plays out like an expertly-choreographed murder-dance.

When Theron finally starts her getaway car, “I Ran” roars over the radio: “I never thought I’d meet a girl like you.” For just that minute, you agree.

3/5

In cinemas August 3. Rated MA15+ for strong violence, coarse language and sex scene.

Photo: Universal