A review of the new film “Atomic Blonde”

This espionage thriller is adapted from a graphic novel called “The Coldest City” and is the directorial debut of David Leitch, formerly a stunt coordinator and second unit director in work such as “John Wick” (and it certainly shows).

The eponymous MI6 agent is Lorraine Broughton, played with panache by the tall, once South African once model who rather stole the show in “Mad Max: Fury Road”. Set in Berlin as the wall is about to fall in 1989, like the recent “Baby Driver” we have a loud soundtrack of contemporary music.

If all this suggests more style than substance, that would be a fair inference. The convoluted plot – set out in a series of flashbacks – revolves, as so often in spy movies (think “Mission: Impossible”), in the hunt for a list of agents but, again as so frequently is the case, the object of the search is really irrelevant (what cinema critics call a MacGuffin).

But, if the substance of the movie is thin, the style is terrific with flashy camerawork and tons of gritty action, involving not just guns and cars but any domestic object that comes to hand, just as long as it can be smashed into someone’s face. A ten-minute fight scene on a set of stairs is set to become something of a classic.

This is not a film that would stand up to any serious feminist critique, but it’s an all-too-rare guilty pleasure to see a confident and capable woman kicking male ass.

There has been too little of it since “The Long Kiss Goodnight” (1996), although this summer we’ve had the delights of “The Ghost In The Shell” and “Wonder Women”. If the Blonde were to become a franchise like Bond or Bourne, I for one would not complain.


 




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