Atomic Blonde (2017)

Although I missed it when it was in theaters, I was pretty excited about Atomic Blonde. After all, it's not like it happens every day to have an action movie lead by a woman. In this case, it was even an incredible women, Charlize Theron. The pretty good trailer and the fact that I've only read positive reviews are the reasons why Atomic Blonde ended up being a huge disappointment for me. 

Just before the fall of the wall, MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is sent in Berlin after the murder of a fellow undercover agent and, with the help of station chief David Percival (James McAvoy), she is tasked to recover a missing list of double agents.

The film starts off quite well but then happens pretty much the same thing that happened in Salt: the story gets too much chaotic, it makes very little sense, it's filled with holes and it gets incredibly boring as it is as flat as a board. Not even the twists can save it. If anything, they make it even worse. There are two twists right at the end that make the "story" even more confusing. If that's even possible. 

The reason why those two twists failed to be effective for me, other than happening too close one from another, is the main character, Lorraine Broughton. At the beginning of the film, she is told she can trust nobody, and that's exactly how I felt about her. She is rather weak, not as a woman but as a character, and I struggled to find what she did and said believable. 

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Atomic Blonde also lacks character development. We are introduced to a lot of different characters but we don't get to know absolutely anything about them, only their names which by the way I've already forgotten. Let's take Lorraine. She is the main character and yet she doesn't have a personality. Even though she has a relationship with Sofia Boutella's character (a French spy that's by miles more interesting than Lorraine), she comes off as nothing but a cold woman. But as such, Charlize Theron does a wonderful job. 

Now that I think about it, it was the same with John Wick, also directed by David Leitch. The only difference is that I enjoyed that one. What did it have more than Atomic Blonde? The action. While there's still plenty of action in here and the action scenes are pretty well filmed, they aren't as exciting and as thrilling as they were in John Wick. It just wasn't that fun. 

Still, there are a few things I loved about this movie. The gorgeous cinematography that mixes very well neon lighting with the beautiful settings of Berlin during winter, and the amazing soundtrack that brings you (back) to the 1980's.