SARA STEWART’S REVIEW OF ‘ATOMIC BLONDE’
Nailing hard-core combat, Theron makes for a slick superspy
HOW do we know Charlize Theron’s secret-agent character is a stone-cold killer? Because this icy blonde bathes in tubs full of ice cubes while drinking Stoli on ice. That’s the subtlety level here, and I am A-OK with it. Because Theron makes one hell of a superspy, and it’s high time she got her “John Wick” moment.
“Atomic Blonde” was directed by David Leitch, co-director of the first “Wick,” and that film’s template is more or less what you’re getting here: one painstakingly choreographed, ultraviolent fight scene after another, interspersed with some amusing chitchat and long shots of your heroine/hero looking damn good.
But it goes one better with a full-throated retro ambience, from its blue-gray palette to its nonstop Goth ’80s soundtrack to its raucous rendering of the Berlin punk scene days before the Berlin Wall came down. Based on the graphic novel “The Coldest City,” this film keeps its comic-book aesthetic front and center.
Theron is Lorraine Broughton, a British MI6 agent on a mission to retrieve a crucial document from a fellow agent (James McAvoy) who’s “gone native” while on assignment in East Berlin. She narrates the mission in flashback from a debriefing with her bosses (Toby Jones and John Goodman), who mostly listen impassively — although her description of a steamy tryst with a fledgling French intel agent (Sofia Boutella) has them squirming in their seats.
Theron, who should definitely be on the “next James Bond” shortlist, goes from withering to warrior in seconds flat. Clothed in a succession of slinky, monochromatic period outfits (BOY London! Sweater dresses! Mesh fingerless gloves!), she dispatches handfuls of assailants with haute finesse. Even when her blond bob gets spattered with blood, it ends up looking like stylish pink highlights. But make no mistake, the fighting is brutal: As in the best moments of the “Bourne” movies, her hand-to-hand combat is mostly soundtracked by bare guttural grunts (and punctuated by the occasional audience gasp, at least at my screening).
The plot is a paperthin excuse on which to hang the action sequences, and sees her teaming with McAvoy’s cagey David Percival to rescue an informant known as Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), who’s in possession of a list of double agents, before Soviet baddies can get to him.
It doesn’t really matter. Just sit back, luxuriate in the tunes, the look and Theron annihilating any lingering notions that women don’t make good action heroes (Gal Gadot, presumably, is cheering her on from the sidelines while counting her boxoffice returns).
Finally, a humble suggestion for Mr. Leitch: I think the logical next step is a sequel in which Wick and Broughton are each assigned a hit on the other. Call it “Guy vs. Spy.”