Review of Atomic Blonde (2017) by Dillon R — 29 Jul 2017

So, Atomic Blonde is a film directed by David Leitch of John Wick fame, and his first solo directorial credit. I don't think there's any use in being secretive about my opinion of the film: I liked it. However, I was also mildly disappointed by it from a narrative standpoint.

The biggest issue I have with the story is how it's told, particularly the first half of the film. Atomic Blonde just couldn't calm down. The entire time I was watching that first half, I was seriously struggling to understand what was going on. Okay, so the movie starts off with Lorraine, our protagonist, portrayed by the lovely Charlize Theron, sitting in an interrogation room with two supervising officers, and she's covered in scratches, bruises and has a rather nasty black eye, so we know she got beaten up pretty badly during the course of the movie. But after that, we cut to what happened before, and this is where it gets confusing. We just start cutting from place to place, and character to character as the plot moves along. This doesn't sound that hard, and this is very difficult to explain, but for some reason, it seemed like these scenes didn't have anything to do with each other. First, she's in a hotel, then she's in a car, beating up the driver and passenger, then she's in a club, then we cut to an alley where there's some kind of a party going on. It's the exact opposite kind of storytelling that Pulp Fiction has: Pulp Fiction has numerous, seemingly-unrelated scenes that are explained to be related to each other by the end, AKA, the non-linear storytelling that it became so famous for, but Atomic Blonde has scenes that are related, and it's telling you they're related from the very start, and it's meant to be seen as a basic, linear storyline, but you just can't make sense of it. Maybe it's the cinematography or maybe it's the editing. All I know is that someone involved must've been hooked up to an IV drip full of cocaine because it was just so frantic.

The only other issue I had with the movie was the ending and how everything came together. I'm gonna put in a mild spoiler warning because I can't elaborate on the movie as well otherwise. By the end of the movie, the alligiances of the characters start flying all over the place. One character's alignment is changed by the narrative three times. Christ! This is like watching the ball fly around during a game of tennis. What I don't like about this isn't that it happened. Some well-hidden twists and turns can make a story even better. What I don't like about this is that it's not explained very well. We almost never go into when or how or why these changes occurred; it just sort of happens.

Aside from these issues, the rest of the movie gets top marks. The performances were great. Charlize Theron did an amazing job as Lorraine. You can tell that she went through a tremendous amount of stunt training for this role. James McAvoy also does a great job as David Percival, who's one of Lorraine's partners in the movie. Sofia Boutella did a great job as well as Delphine, who's Lorraine's lover and fellow spy in this film, though I must say that the character was severely underused in this movie. And finally, the action scenes were absolutely fantastic. It's so much fun seeing a character who fights with her mind as well as her fists, because the movie makes it clear she's not as strong as most of her opponents, so she needs to use anything she can get her hands on as improvised weapons and she cleverly uses the environment around her to aid in her fighting.

One scene that stands out is a fight she has against some four men in an apartment building about halfway through the movie. I liked this scene not just for being very well done, but for showing us just how much punishment everyone can take, and for throwing in bad guys who actually know what they're doing, and actually show the audience how dangerous the situation is, rather than existing solely to get mowed down with little effort by the hero. During this scene, Lorraine batters these men mercilessly, but no matter what, they keep getting up and going for her, whereas bad guys in other films get knocked out in one or two hits. The same can be said of Lorraine herself, however. Throughout the fight, the men overwhelm her several times and almost kill her, and while she does eventually overpower them and kill them, by the end, she's reduced to a bloodied wreck lying on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness and can barely even stand back up. It really makes me admire her character because despite how much danger she was in, she kept getting back up. I was reminded of Kill Bill in a way, really.

So all in all, this movie, while it could've been better, was still quite good and is definitely worth seeing. Would I see this a second time? Maybe when it comes on television.