2024 Entry #021 01-16-24 “Atomic Blonde” is a 2017 American action thriller film directed by David Leitch (in his feature directorial debut – he later directed “Deadpool 2” and performed in “V for Vendetta”) from a screenplay by Kurt Johnstad (“300”), based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. The film was co-produced by the film’s star Charlize Theron (“Sweet November”, “Monster”, “Head in the Clouds”, “The Old Guard”, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”), and also features James McAvoy (“Bright Young Things”, “Wimbledon”, “Deadpool 2”, “It Chapter Two”), John Goodman (“Revenge of the Nerds”, “Roseanne”, “ParaNorman”, “Love the Coopers”, “The Conners”), Til Schweiger (“Intimate Affairs”), Eddie Marsan (“EastEnders”, “V for Vendetta”, “Deadpool 2”), Sofia Boutella (“Star Trek Beyond”, “Modern Love”, “Rebel Moon”), and Toby Jones (“Orlando”, “Mrs. Henderson Presents”, “Infamous”, “Doctor Who”, “Christopher and His Kind”, & the Harry Potter films as Dobby). The story revolves around an undercover MI6 agent who is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
I really like Charlize Theron and she’s incredible here as Lorraine Broughton, the film’s central character. I wasn’t sure I was into this movie when it started but I got much more into it as it continued – until something happened that spoiled that for me. Spoilers follow. The film features a lesbian subplot that was not in the original book. This reportedly came from writer Kurt Johnstad, who suggested it after Theron was “thinking about how do you make this different from other spy movies”. Leitch has insisted that the scenes are not there to be “provocative”, but “more about if you are a spy you will do whatever it takes to get information” and how the main character “find[s] her intimacies and her friendships in small doses”. All of that is fine – it’s welcome, until the film’s villain murders the undercover French agent lesbian love interest, played by Sofia Boutella. The kill happens relatively late in the film and I kept hoping the character wasn’t dead, and while the dangers of their jobs make the death a likely outcome and we have Theron’s character avenging her lover, the ick of another lesbian character dead hurt my enjoyment of the movie and took a film that I initially thought I’d be recommending to friends and turned it into something I will likely never view again.
On the flip side, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s excellent soundtrack which features: David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, A Flock of Seagulls, ‘Til Tuesday, The Clash, Peter Schilling, HEALTHY, Tyler Bates, Nena, Ryal, Robert Ponger & Falco, Re-Flex, Kaleida & Marilyn Manson.