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Atomic Blonde, 2017
In 1989, an undercover agent named Lorraine (Charlize Theron) returns battered and bloodied from a mission and is summoned to a debriefing with two intelligence officials (Toby Jones, John Goodman). There she recounts her mission to East Berlin, where she was to work with an agent named Percival (James McAvoy) to retrieve a highly-sensitive list of undercover agents.
I had been looking forward to this film ever since it came out, with its promise of big, dumb, colorful action fun.
Meh.
First of all, Theron is too good for this movie. She's basically the reason I stuck with it, and she is operating on a different level than the film around her. She looks cool, she is plenty convincing in her action sequences, and she finds just the right note of the hardcore assassin who just might have a beating human heart inside.
I will also say that the action scenes were fine. While I did not care for the use of the old "slow motion than fast motion" thing, the action was easy to follow and there was some fun choreography.
But the downsides, man, where do I even begin?
The film is packed with quality actors (Jones, Goodman, Eddie Marsan, etc), but the writing is often clunky or overly cutesy. Marsan's character--the man who knows the names on the list and wants to escape East Berlin)--is probably the most recognizably human, but I felt as if most of the other characters bordered on caricature. McAvoy spends most of the movie Acting, and the contrast between his performance and Theron's is jarring.
I think that the film was aiming for a hyper-stylized tone, but to me it was a miss. There are lots of scenes of fast cars zipping around the streets and lots of crazy zooms. But there isn't a natural feel to these elements. It's more like someone took a bunch of stuff that they thought was cool from other movies and just shoved it in this one. And what really makes it hard is that these elements have no organization or cohesion to them. Like, at one point a character just starts delivering a monologue to the camera! Something that does not happen at any other point in the film! This is supposed to be a sort of graphic novel type world, but it is so inconsistent that the internal world of the film never seems even remotely real.
The movie is also inescapably, and artlessly, male-gazey. There are only two featured female characters, and boy do they seem to spend a lot of time in sexy lingerie! And boy does the camera spend a lot of time lovingly panning up or down their bodies! The climax (PUN! INTENDED!) of this absurdity is a lesbian sex scene, where, well, you know how when women have sex they make sure to have their bodies facing the same way so that the camera can get a good look at both of them? Like, just spend an inordinate amount of time not looking at each other?
I also had a very mixed reaction to the at-times intrusive, and relentless use of 80s music or covers of 80s music, most of which seems there to evoke a "Oh, hey! It's this song!!" reaction as opposed to actually fitting the scene.
When it comes down to it, I just didn't click with this one. I actually really liked Theron in the lead role (as I almost always do) and I was excited watching the actors' named scrolling by in the opening credits. I was hoping for some "turn your brain off" dumb fun, and just didn't get it. By the last 30 minutes I had pretty much tuned out, only to discover that this movie, like some horrible Lord of the Rings homage, had decided that it just did not know how to end. Seriously, there were like 5 different moments where I was like "And that's the end. . . or not." The off-putting objectification (scene with anonymous-but-naked prostitutes? Check. Scene that takes place in a strip club for no reason? Check. Innumerable scenes of female characters getting dressed/undressed? Check) was just the last nail in the coffin and turned indifference into slight dislike.
I had the bar set so low for a frivolous Saturday night movie!
Atomic Blonde, 2017
In 1989, an undercover agent named Lorraine (Charlize Theron) returns battered and bloodied from a mission and is summoned to a debriefing with two intelligence officials (Toby Jones, John Goodman). There she recounts her mission to East Berlin, where she was to work with an agent named Percival (James McAvoy) to retrieve a highly-sensitive list of undercover agents.
I had been looking forward to this film ever since it came out, with its promise of big, dumb, colorful action fun.
Meh.
First of all, Theron is too good for this movie. She's basically the reason I stuck with it, and she is operating on a different level than the film around her. She looks cool, she is plenty convincing in her action sequences, and she finds just the right note of the hardcore assassin who just might have a beating human heart inside.
I will also say that the action scenes were fine. While I did not care for the use of the old "slow motion than fast motion" thing, the action was easy to follow and there was some fun choreography.
But the downsides, man, where do I even begin?
The film is packed with quality actors (Jones, Goodman, Eddie Marsan, etc), but the writing is often clunky or overly cutesy. Marsan's character--the man who knows the names on the list and wants to escape East Berlin)--is probably the most recognizably human, but I felt as if most of the other characters bordered on caricature. McAvoy spends most of the movie Acting, and the contrast between his performance and Theron's is jarring.
I think that the film was aiming for a hyper-stylized tone, but to me it was a miss. There are lots of scenes of fast cars zipping around the streets and lots of crazy zooms. But there isn't a natural feel to these elements. It's more like someone took a bunch of stuff that they thought was cool from other movies and just shoved it in this one. And what really makes it hard is that these elements have no organization or cohesion to them. Like, at one point a character just starts delivering a monologue to the camera! Something that does not happen at any other point in the film! This is supposed to be a sort of graphic novel type world, but it is so inconsistent that the internal world of the film never seems even remotely real.
The movie is also inescapably, and artlessly, male-gazey. There are only two featured female characters, and boy do they seem to spend a lot of time in sexy lingerie! And boy does the camera spend a lot of time lovingly panning up or down their bodies! The climax (PUN! INTENDED!) of this absurdity is a lesbian sex scene, where, well, you know how when women have sex they make sure to have their bodies facing the same way so that the camera can get a good look at both of them? Like, just spend an inordinate amount of time not looking at each other?
I also had a very mixed reaction to the at-times intrusive, and relentless use of 80s music or covers of 80s music, most of which seems there to evoke a "Oh, hey! It's this song!!" reaction as opposed to actually fitting the scene.
When it comes down to it, I just didn't click with this one. I actually really liked Theron in the lead role (as I almost always do) and I was excited watching the actors' named scrolling by in the opening credits. I was hoping for some "turn your brain off" dumb fun, and just didn't get it. By the last 30 minutes I had pretty much tuned out, only to discover that this movie, like some horrible Lord of the Rings homage, had decided that it just did not know how to end. Seriously, there were like 5 different moments where I was like "And that's the end. . . or not." The off-putting objectification (scene with anonymous-but-naked prostitutes? Check. Scene that takes place in a strip club for no reason? Check. Innumerable scenes of female characters getting dressed/undressed? Check) was just the last nail in the coffin and turned indifference into slight dislike.
I had the bar set so low for a frivolous Saturday night movie!