Miles of Movies

Film Info:

                                                                                                     Atomic Blonde is about Lorraine (Charlize                                                                                                             Theron), a British spy who has gone undercover in                                                                                                   Berlin during the peak of the Cold War to recover a                                                                                                 list containing the names and secret identity of every                                                                                               spy the British, American, and French forces have                                                                                                     stationed in the East and West. Sure it’s the exact                                                                                                     same premise to Mission: Impossible and Skyfall (to                                                                                                 name just two), but that’s the premise of the movie.

                                                                                                     This movie is a bit of a mess in that it doesn’t                                                                                                     really know what it wants to be. For the first half                                                                                                       hour, this film was pretty boring; it dumped tons of                                                                                                 exposition and plenty of characters without really establishing motivations for any of them. There are plenty of good action scenes with impressive long takes and stuntwork, but you don’t care about anyone involved so it’s hard to take them seriously, which is what the film was going for. To make things worse, the film used really loud music all the time, almost as a filler for the lack of engaging content - it often felt like a flashy music video. But then, almost halfway through the movie, the film decides to take on a more comedic approach to the action. There is a scene in a stairwell where Lorraine’s adversary’s just don’t know when to quit - I didn’t expect the scene to be as hilarious as it ended up, but that’s when the movie took a turn for the best.

       Even though the movie doesn’t quite maintain this comedic action, moments pop up here and there, making me laugh each time. Sure, the movie is a bit of a mess storywise and spends a lot of time explaining things, but the action keeps it entertaining. Another thing I liked in this movie was that it tried to make Lorraine vulnerable a few times. She has a few scenes with Delphine (Sofia Boutella) that show a little vulnerability that made me care about her. It’s too bad that these scenes come a good hour into the movie, but at least you could see that the filmmakers were trying.

      Overall, I found Atomic Blonde to be mostly entertaining, even if featured a familiar but messy story and couldn’t quite keep my attention for the first hour or so. It gets better as it goes along and, by the end, I was having a pretty good time.

Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy,         Sofia Boutella

Writer: Kurt Johnstad

Director: David Leitch

Genres: Action

Release date: July 28, 2017