Atomic Blonde could definitely become a franchise like the James Bond or Jason Bourne movies everyone keeps comparing it with. Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton is smart, tough, relentless, cool, stylish, resourceful, beautiful, deadly, and really good at the spy game.
Charlize Theron is the coolest spy to ever grace a spy movie.The Atomic Blonde action scenes were flawless. There was no holding back from Charlize Theron when it came to kicking ass. She and her scene partners must have trained a lot to make it look real. And by a lot I mean days and days, because there were many fight scenes to work out. A multitude of problems requiring Lorraine to beat up hordes of big men formed most of the action.
The plot was built around a hunt for a list of names of English spies. The list was valuable because it needed to be kept secret. Lorraine was charged with hunting it down. The setting was 1980s Berlin, just before the Berlin wall came down.
What a great setting. The streets were awash with political protestors and celebrants. Berlin was full of spies from England, France, Russia, Germany, and the United States. Some were double agents. All were in danger if the list got out. A series of double crosses and plot twists kept the action moving.
Lorraine was sent to find a British operative named David Percival (James McAvoy). He’d been stationed in Berlin for some time and knew it well. He didn’t have the list but he had a guy who memorized the list. The memory man was Spyglass (Eddie Marsan).
An American CIA agent named Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman) was in Berlin and later in on debriefing Lorraine when she made it home to England.
Lorraine and Percival tried to get Spyglass from one side of the Berlin Wall to the other without getting killed. Lorraine was also after the original list, which was hidden in a watch.
A woman named Delphine (Sofia Boutella) followed Lorraine from the moment she landed in Berlin. She was a French spy. Lorraine solved the problem of keeping track of her by taking her into her bed. I believe it was more than just sex and keeping your enemy close between them, because Lorraine didn’t like it when Delphine was hurt.
If Charlize Theron’s character were a man, he would be called suave. Is there an equivalent word for a woman? Charming? Sophisticated? Confident? Whatever the word, Lorraine Broughton is a character with that je ne sais quoi that takes her beyond sexy and cool to a level of legendary. Charlize Theron is perfection at playing this part. The Atomic Blonde is a creation that should grow into a whole series of action adventures featuring the beautiful but deadly spy.
Lorraine needs a different first name – one that starts with J. Then she’d be a JB just like the other action heroes.
Charlize Theron is the coolest spy to ever grace a spy movie. I’m ready for Atomic Blonde 2 right now.
The film was directed by David Leitch. The screenplay was written by Kurt Johnstad based on a graphic novel called The Coldest City.
It was too loud (take ear plugs) and too violent, but I enjoyed Atomic Blonde very much. It wasn’t a great movie, but it was a fun movie.
I thought it was a great movie. Intricate plot, interesting characters, beautiful cinematography, flawless choreography, great soundtrack, and just so in-freaking-credibly badass.
I love that the fights weren’t perfect. There were believable mistakes made by the characters, and the fights got sloppier the more work down they got.
The fights looked pretty good to my untrained eye. You probably saw a lot of things I wouldn’t recognized about what they were doing.
They looked great. They looked real. There’s two different ways to do excellent fight choreography: 1. you can make it elaborate and smooth, like a violent ballet. Pretty and cool, but wholly unrealistic. 2. You can make it look real. Real fighting is messy and brutal. There’s still an art and a kind of beauty in it, but it is more jazz than orchestral.
what a fantastic action movie. i’d love to see this become a series.
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