Atomic Blonde (2017)
Directed by David Leitch
An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
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30 films that influenced Atomic Blonde
What critics say influenced Atomic Blonde
Take, for instance, a scene where Lorraine makes mince meat of a Russian henchman's face behind the screen of a movie theater playing Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker."
The film serves up these bravura moments in entertainingly different ways — sometimes with an artsy backdrop (Lorraine battles in a movie theatre while Tarkovsky’s Stalker plays on a large screen behind her), and other times with a gripping simplicity, like when she has to journey through a seemingly abandoned building, shooting and punching her way to safety.
In a debriefing room at MI-6, she narrates the events of the preceding week to a British handler (Toby Jones) and a guest from the CIA (John Goodman): She is sent to West Berlin to recover a list of Western agents called, er, “the List”; makes contact with the punk-rock local station chief, Percival (James McAvoy), who has a side business selling Jordache jeans to East Berliners; stabs thugs at a screening of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker ; and has a fling with a rookie French intelligence agent, Delphine (Sofia Boutella).
It ain’t art, either, even if Lorraine does fight a few villains in silhouette against a Berlin movie screen playing Andrei Tarkosky’s “Stalker.”
There’s one fight sequence where Lorraine takes on a bad guy in front of a movie screen showing Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which will give a nice laugh to cinephiles like me.
Here, his more pretentious reference is to Tarkovsky (Broughton fights a bunch of henchmen at a screening of Stalker), and there is the suggestion that collapsing, nightmare-ish East Berlin has become like Stalker’s zone: a lawless, borderless place that allows people to live out their desires, to find their true selves — for better or for worse.
In Atomic Blonde , Charlize and her adversaries finish fights wheezing, staggering around covered in blood, spit, and snot — like Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini’s bathroom fight in True Romance .
“John Wick” is a touchstone here (Leitch was “Wick’s” uncredited co-director), and there are several visual homages to “True Romance.”
Atomic Blonde at times resembles an extended 1980s music video, and there’s an era-specific movie homage: the white trench coat and shades Theron wears in one sequence recalls Michael Caine’s lethal cross-dresser from Dressed to Kill .
The main hook — there’s a guy who has a list of every CIA and MI6 operative working undercover in the field — is lifted straight from the first Mission: Impossible movie, much of the narrative lacks clarity and the bad guys are standard issue Eastern Eurotrash heavies.
What worked for Mission: Impossible and Skyfall can work just as fine here.
Her outfit and hair—here much smoother than in other scenes—is almost exactly the same as Michelle Pfeiffer’s black-sequin look in Scarface , in that scene where she freaks out at the dinner table.
It’s a sly nod to a similar scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent.”
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She mostly reminded me of Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil series .
He’s positioned the film as Tinker, Tailor via La Femme Nikita with a peppering of No Way Out, but it doesn’t quite gel.
Scarlett Johansson rocked it as a chemically enhanced killer in the 2014 "Lucy."
And then there’s David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire),” on which there should have been a moratorium following Quentin Tarantino’s masterful use of the song in “Inglourious Basterds.”
Some beats land better than others, though: David Bowie’s theme from Cat People might have played better if it didn’t immediately conjure up images of Quentin Tarantino’s similar cue in Inglourious Basterds.
That’s every bit as inexplicable as thinking you can use Stealers Wheel's “Stuck in the Middle With You” after “Reservoir Dogs.”
Though Broughton isn’t very Bride-like, Atomic Blonde shares certain structural elements with the Kill Bill series.
Butt-kicking women on screen are far from a novelty these days, but Theron’s Lorraine is one of the most fierce to yet grace a screen; fantasy book her in a fight against Uma Thurman’s Bride character from the “Kill Bill” movies and let the fanboys pick a winner.
Now, Charlize Theron bestows upon us a new and equally riveting action icon, playing the sexy and unstoppable MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton in stunt-man turned director David Leitch’s follow-up to “John Wick,” the eye-popping and enthralling “Atomic Blonde.”
Atomic Blonde is an easy sell: It’s Charlize Theron in a stylish thriller from one-half of the directing duo behind John Wick .
This time, she’s teamed with John Wick director David Leitch to create a spy thriller with equal parts Cold War intrigue and ‘80s synth pop.
The first solo effort by “John Wick” co-director David Leitch, “Atomic Blonde” exists in the same realm of hyperstylized action built around the cold ferocity of an unstoppable action star.
Despite director David Leitch’s ties to Keanu Reeves, Atomic Blonde is no Lady John Wick.
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Even James McAvoy’s playful turn as David Percival (picture James Bond if he went AWOL and watched Fight Club too many times) can’t help but feel like a distraction while we’re waiting for Lorraine to pummel the next unsuspecting KGB goon.
Stuntman (“Fight Club,””300”) turned director (he had a hand in “John Wick”) David Leitch proves he was the right guy for the job with every furious blast of onscreen mayhem.
He’s trying to sell Fight Club-era Brad Pitt, but no one’s buying.
This is especially true of the climactic set piece, a deranged, mind-bogglingly long Children Of Men -style super-take in which our heroine fights a small group of KGB agents down the staircases, into the living rooms, and through the walls of an East Berlin apartment building, before making off in a crowd-plowing car chase and shoot-out—all directed with the cuts hidden by digital trickery.
When he’s not delivering the goods — including an epic long take battle that starts on a staircase and ends by out-“Children of Men”-ing “Children of Men” — Leitch is drowning the film in ’80s-fetish style.
This sequence is destined to be viewed millions of times on YouTube and placed on clickbaity internet movie listicles alongside similar one-take action scenes from Children of Men and The Revenant .
Most critically, there's an ambitious and astonishing eight-minute-long, single-take action sequence that mixes Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men with the gonzo gun-fu of Chad Stahelski's John Wick .
Your draw drops early and stays open as the scene keeps building, and it challenges the high wire unbroken scene in “Children of Men” in terms of this millennium’s top filmed achievements.
It’s a legitimately jaw-dropping scene, shot (by “John Wick” cinematographer Jonathan Sela) and digitally tweaked to look as though it were achieved in a single unbroken take, in the look-Ma-no-edits style popularized by movies like “Children of Men” and “The Revenant.”