Atomic Blonde (2017)

About half way through  the stylish and kinetic Atomic Blonde, I began to believe the film was going in a fascinating direction which could have made it as intellectually fascinating as it was visually. But the film reverses course in the last moments with a disappointingly predictable denouement which makes the film feel like striking eye candy with only about as much substance as a sugar rush.

Generally Atomic Blonde is delightful over the top action fun with a neon twist of 80s nostalgia. It's all sexy and violent, with a surprisingly straight forward story that gives us just enough to carry us from one set piece to the next. Charlize Theron is charismatic and magnetic in the lead and we can't take our eyes of this (often literally) broken hero as she fights her way through the end of the cold war.

But as the film goes on it becomes clear there is little beneath the surface of this story, that it feels like a (rather well) warmed over spy story which we've seen hundreds of times before. The film feels more insterested with its shockingly lit sets and deliciously choreographed fight sequences that it does in investing weight to its plot. It feels more interested in highlighting the surface bruises on its heroine more than developing who she is underneath. There is an insidiousness to the male gaze the film employs in its coverage of its female subject. We get to look at superspy Lorraine but never see who she is. This could have been employed in an interesting way if it was presented as her obfuscating our view of her, but that never rings true. Instead the camera just feels lascivious and leering.

And this speaks to my main disappointment of the film which takes a bit of spoiling of the plot to discuss so stop reading here if you don't want spoilers.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, about half way through I began seeing signs that the story may be taking us in a direction that was not what I expected. That the film was inverting the roles of hero and villain and asking us as the audience who always feel compelled to side with the protagonist of the film, to question why and how and what is the nature of right and wrong, especially in global politics or the world of espionage. There is something about the nature of the "spy genre" which allows us to accept people acting horribly (murder and other cruel acts) because they are "saving democracy" or even "saving civilization" itself. I thought Atomic Blonde taking us to a place where we'd have to question that by making Lorraine the "villain" of her own story, or inversely a hero who defies our western governments and makes us question who are the good guys.

And Atomic Blonde plays this little cat and mouse game with the audience right up to the end where a scene which feels fairly tacked on, shows us it's just a long con game. She's played the Brits on behalf of the Americans and she saves western civilization. Oh good, we can sigh our sense of relief that all is right with out understanding of right and wrong. But the film's failure to be more interesting than a standard spy film tied with the clumsy and sort of obvious way it handles this, was disappointing. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the eye candy of the film but, like eating candy, I left without any real satisfaction.

And the promise of something more substantial being left unfulfilled brought this into stark relief.

Atomic Blonde
Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgard, John Goodman, Toby Jones
Director: David Leitch
Writer: Kurt Johnstad