Director David Leitch’s work co-directing the first John Wick movie served him well in preparation for Atomic Blonde, a Cold War-era spy thriller based on the graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnson and Sam Hart. Just on a purely aesthetic level, this movie easily kept my interesting going. Jonathan Sela’s cinematography practically turns 1989 Berlin into a character in its own right.
Alongside the late 1980s soundtrack thumping in the background, and newscasts covering the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it all combines into a cool backdrop. “You’re going to love Berlin”, says Broughton’s driver as she makes her way into the city, and it almost felt like he was addressing the audience.
Fresh off a great performance as Furiosa in Mad Max Fury Road, Charlize Theron is our remarkably stylish hero Lorraine Broughton, an MI6 agent who’s been assigned to retrieve a list of the USSR’s active operatives. It’s a strip of microfilm hidden inside an innocent looking watch, which makes it incredibly attractive for smugglers hoping to sell it for a big payoff. To make matters worse, there’s a rogue agent in the shadows codenamed Satchel, who the heroes know is pulling the strings behind the curtain.
This all makes Broughton’s search even more complicated, and there’s a number of interesting twists as she and her contact David Percival (James McAvoy, who’s obviously having tons of fun here) try to find the List before it falls into the wrong hands. The dynamic between the two starts off with an air of apprehension, and McAvoy and Theron display some fun chemistry together while it evolves.
Theron’s charisma and presence help make Broughton a very interesting character, even when she’s basically following standard super-spy tropes. She arms herself with a collected and skeptical demeanor, consciously playing up her sex appeal but not allowing herself to be taken advantage of. At times I felt she was channeling Daniel Craig’s Bond a bit, but Lorraine is still her own character.
One thing I appreciated were the hints of vulnerability she was allowed, some examples including her habit of soothing her many combat wounds in tubs of ice water, and her relationship with the rookie French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella). Their encounter in a local nightclub results in a steamy, but still emotionally close bond.
Leitch isn’t shy about allowing Broughton to get bruised and bloody as she gets into fisticuffs, car chases and gunfights with enemy agents, and the fights are wonderfully choreographed. Combined with the rich atmosphere (George Michael’s “Father Figure” has never been so gory), I personally felt the battles were definitely the most memorable aspect of the film. It’s here where I think Theron proves herself- again- to be one of Hollywood’s top action stars today.
My biggest issue with Atomic may be in the way the plot unfolds. Lorraine tells much of the story during an interrogation/meeting to her superiors Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld (a world-weary John Goodman), who are desperate to learn exactly what went awry during her mission in Berlin ten days prior.
This eliminates much of the dramatic tension around Broughton herself, since the audience now knows she’s going to survive. (Although I’ll give them credit, there is a well-timed cutback to the meeting room midway through the movie that resulted in a lot of laughs in my theater.)
The build up instead is in the mystery that she’s attempting to decipher, as well as the fates of those who come into contact with her. Like every good classic spy hero, anyone getting too close to Broughton is putting their life at risk, seeing as death and danger are natural, everyday occurrences for her. When one of her superiors (James Faulkner) advises her to “trust no one”, she would make Stone Cold Steve Austin proud. While it’s never in doubt that Broughton is on the side of justice, there’s an element of mystery to her that doesn’t feel like it can be entirely explored in one film.
Were the story not quite as convoluted and if some of the more personal elements were given more focus, I dare say Atomic Blonde could have emerged as a classic spy drama, but the final cut I did see easily made me want to see a sequel featuring Broughton. Hell, it made me want to read or maybe even write fan fiction with her and John Wick just being cool badasses together. It’s not perfect, but I’ll still give it a decent recommendation. It’s an oddly entertaining mix of sophistication, decadence, hyper-violence and noir intrigue, led by a fascinating protagonist whose adventures I hope aren’t over.