ATOMIC BLONDE: Blondes Have More Gun

Director: David Leitch
Writer: Kurt Johnstad
Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsas, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Sofia Boutella
Runtime: 115 mins.
2017

In 2014, two career stuntmen, Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, teamed up to make a movie about a retired assassin who seeks violent retribution for the murder of his dog. That film was John Wick, and its stylized yet brutally functional brand of gun-fu was a shot in the arm for the western action movie landscape, which hadn't experienced a proper paradigm shift since the Bourne films in the early 2000s. We're presently seeing the results of that impact, with John Wick clones already seeping down the pipeline. First to the party, though, were Leitch and Stahelski themselves. Stahelski stuck around to take the John Wick franchise to its next entry, John Wick: Chapter 2. Meanwhile, David Leitch split off to direct Atomic Blonde.

The two films function well as complementary variations on the John Wick formula. In John Wick: Chapter 2, Stahelski amps up the mythic, larger-than-life elements from the original and fills his movie with wall-to-wall action. Leitch instead opts to ground Atomic Blonde in a spy narrative that's more subdued, patient, and convoluted.

In fact, Atomic Blonde is patient to a fault. The story is foregrounded, yet largely inconsequential. Maybe even a bit dull, with its cluttery frame narrative and perfunctory number of twists and turns. It is a shoddy scaffolding for Leitch's masterful action choreography, which made me realize something remarkable: Atomic Blonde is a rare film in that it seems to exist almost entirely for the purpose of one scene, a scene that arrives towards the end of the movie.


I don't want to dismiss the narrative entirely however, because it succeeds in anchoring the film in Theron's character. This is no small accomplishment as Theron manages to carry us through much of Atomic Blonde's plotty bulk on the strength of her performance alone. Lorraine Broughton is a British superspy, salamandery and utterly pragmatic. Her task is to track down people and information in Berlin during the height of the Cold War. We first meet her emerging from an ice bath in a blue-tinted room. She is beat to hell but entirely placid. As she stares into the mirror with her lizardlike eyes, we feel like we already know all we need to know about Lorraine's character.

Which is good, because there is precious little actual information about Lorraine doled out through the film. Theron manages to invest a blank slate character with a rich inner life without even giving us so much as a peek into it. She is mesmerizing, and the film would be a total bore without her.

Aiding along Theron's work is Jonathan Sela's deft cinematography. Even when the narrative is floundering, Leitch and Sela go the extra mile to make even something as banal as Lorraine walking down the street seem compelling and lively. Leitch films Atomic Blonde like a thriller with some aggressive lighting design adding a heavy noir tinge. The camera in Atomic Blonde behaves like its title character, slick and furtive and incredibly dynamic when the situation calls for it. Even though we don't know much about her, we feel close to Lorraine thanks to the camera's affection for Theron's every gesture.

Which brings us to the culmination of these artistic choices, the aforementioned scene at the crux of the movie. I would suggest that you avoid spoilers if you haven't seen the movie, but in truth there is not much notable about the plotting of this scene. Lorraine is in an apartment complex with an injured operative named Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) who she must protect from half a dozen goons. It's boilerplate thriller stuff, but the pleasures of the scene are found in its craftsmanship. Lorraine is no John Wick; she cannot dispatch six goons with a flick of her wrist. The world of Atomic Blonde is dirtier than that of John Wick. The scene consists of a series of skirmishes in which every fight is consequential and every blow feels agonizing. This tableau of action choreography is sketched together by a single handheld long take. Showy long takes tend to have the effect of distancing the audience, but Leitch keeps the camera intimate with the action so that the audience feels as accosted as Lorraine.

The intensity of the scene takes full advantage of the film's previous restraint, retroactively improving some of the duller stretches that came before. It works because we haven't seen Lorraine dispatch countless bad guys. That is what I mean by a single scene justifying the entire film, a claim that isn't entirely fair because the final twenty minutes are also stylish and thrilling, excepting a wonky final scene that undercuts some of the movie's themes.

Atomic Blonde is certainly a film that gets better as it progresses, which to me is preferable to the alternative. A better script could have enhanced Leitch's artistry--note that I haven't seen fit to mention any of the film's other characters like James McAvoy's David Percival or Sofia Boutella's Delphine Lasalle. The real stars are Theron and Leitch, who between the two of them generate enough electricity to save the film from its flaws. It may be that Stahelski and Leitch's impulses work better together, but I am nonetheless happy to live in a world where both are making their own independent stamps on the genre.

3 / 5  BLOBS