Atomic Blonde (2017)
I Saw Atomic Blonde And All I Got Was This Overwhelming Urge To Write and Inconclusive Review, but on a t-shirt or something.
The internet has not been able to shut up about Charlize Theron and Atomic Blonde for months. It's from David Leitch one of the directors of critical darling John Wick - full disclosure, I've not seen it, for lazy reasons I'll explain later - and is based on a series of graphic novels called The Coldest City, and by all accounts both of those things are extremely obvious in the movie. It's got that graphic novel feel to it, ultra slick and stylised with extreme attention to visual detail and use of colour. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a spy in 1989 Germany, in her pursuit to retrieve a list of intelligence information.
Most obviously, it's an attempt to subvert the tropes of the male dominated spy genre. Lorraine is every bit as suave and mysterious and her counterparts, and far better dressed. She tears through opponents in hand to hand combat with ease.That is so much fun to watch, and gives me something to latch on to in a fairly straightforward spy flick. The reason I never got into movies like the James Bond franchise was because there's not a whole lot for me to connect with within their standard formula. If it's a genre or idea I'm interested in, I don't care who the protagonist is; when it comes to spy movies, I'm far more likely to lose interest in some straight white guy in a suit.
Speaking of straight white guys...we need to address one of the major cultural criticisms of this movie and its complete validity. As a woman, I loved the parts of Atomic Blonde that showed a woman in strength and sometimes in weakness, and especially in severity in a roll that is traditionally filled by men. As a queer woman, I was absolutely grossed out by the treatment of Sofia Boutella's character. It's impossible to talk about without spoilers, so consider this a warning for the next few sentences if you've managed to avoid the LGBT Atomic Blonde Critique and are keen to keep doing so. Delphine exists as a same gender attracted woman of colour, in her tiny part, to establish softness in the movie and then to be killed off on screen in a highly sexualised fashion. I know it's a spy trope, I get it, the lingerie clad corpse, but in my own dramatic way I felt a little sick. There's something about luring viewers in with eroticised girl-on-girl (presumably largely your straight male audience) in promotional material only to use an LGBT character to give Broughton a glimmer of humanity. To her credit, Boutella does wonders with the role: the union of vulnerability and passion were palpable in her performance. Her death scene, though? I think it did a disservice to the film, honestly. There were other characters whose deaths would have made sense as emotional plot devices, where hers felt like a lazy employment of the tired old "bury your gays" trope. I was rooting for it, because of course Theron's character would disregard gender as a barrier to sex for information, but then felt - to me, as An Angry Bisexual - kind of exploitative.
All that said, it's a sexy movie. I'm not just talking about the gay stuff, which of course I'm all about - even when I worry about how that's reading to the audience who aren't in my little niche crew, and how to differentiate between my queer lady gaze and the Male GazeTM - or all of the shots of Charlize Theron in amazing coats and fishnets. What I mean is that everything about this movie is sexy, from the music choices to the cinematography. It's set in 1989, in spite of how well fitting all the clothing is and how understated everyone's makeup is, so the soundtrack makes copious use of 80s synth pop from around the world. The shots transition in interesting ways and the whole movie has a distinctly cool colour palette that feels perfectly fitting with the era. The scenes in Lorraine's Berlin hotel room are a dark neon fever dream and I really did enjoy the use of colour and lighting through the whole movie.
Story wise, I felt like they loosened up a little to give leeway to the visual. It was pretty clear that this was a vehicle for the subversion of the spy machismo, so the focus was on looking slick and Charlize Theron killing lots of people. A lot of key plot points are withheld until the very end of the movie, but it's pretty easy to just excuse anything that seems not to fit and to go along with the ride. I did wish that the writing had been tightened up just a little, and that the transitions through time hadn't been quite so many and so seemingly random. There's so much emphasis on twists and crosses that it just feels often overwrought. If you're going to get us to just enjoy the ride, then make that easy to do.
I did have a great time with this movie, but I feel emotionally caught up in it. I wanted it to do better, because I want women to be at the helm of everything. I want to see this movie with a women in charge behind the scenes and see how that feels. I want to watch a movie set in the the late 80s and not be distracted by how anachronistic the characters in the background seem to be. I want to buy a trench coat.
Rating: 7.5/10
The internet has not been able to shut up about Charlize Theron and Atomic Blonde for months. It's from David Leitch one of the directors of critical darling John Wick - full disclosure, I've not seen it, for lazy reasons I'll explain later - and is based on a series of graphic novels called The Coldest City, and by all accounts both of those things are extremely obvious in the movie. It's got that graphic novel feel to it, ultra slick and stylised with extreme attention to visual detail and use of colour. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a spy in 1989 Germany, in her pursuit to retrieve a list of intelligence information.
Most obviously, it's an attempt to subvert the tropes of the male dominated spy genre. Lorraine is every bit as suave and mysterious and her counterparts, and far better dressed. She tears through opponents in hand to hand combat with ease.That is so much fun to watch, and gives me something to latch on to in a fairly straightforward spy flick. The reason I never got into movies like the James Bond franchise was because there's not a whole lot for me to connect with within their standard formula. If it's a genre or idea I'm interested in, I don't care who the protagonist is; when it comes to spy movies, I'm far more likely to lose interest in some straight white guy in a suit.
Speaking of straight white guys...we need to address one of the major cultural criticisms of this movie and its complete validity. As a woman, I loved the parts of Atomic Blonde that showed a woman in strength and sometimes in weakness, and especially in severity in a roll that is traditionally filled by men. As a queer woman, I was absolutely grossed out by the treatment of Sofia Boutella's character. It's impossible to talk about without spoilers, so consider this a warning for the next few sentences if you've managed to avoid the LGBT Atomic Blonde Critique and are keen to keep doing so. Delphine exists as a same gender attracted woman of colour, in her tiny part, to establish softness in the movie and then to be killed off on screen in a highly sexualised fashion. I know it's a spy trope, I get it, the lingerie clad corpse, but in my own dramatic way I felt a little sick. There's something about luring viewers in with eroticised girl-on-girl (presumably largely your straight male audience) in promotional material only to use an LGBT character to give Broughton a glimmer of humanity. To her credit, Boutella does wonders with the role: the union of vulnerability and passion were palpable in her performance. Her death scene, though? I think it did a disservice to the film, honestly. There were other characters whose deaths would have made sense as emotional plot devices, where hers felt like a lazy employment of the tired old "bury your gays" trope. I was rooting for it, because of course Theron's character would disregard gender as a barrier to sex for information, but then felt - to me, as An Angry Bisexual - kind of exploitative.
All that said, it's a sexy movie. I'm not just talking about the gay stuff, which of course I'm all about - even when I worry about how that's reading to the audience who aren't in my little niche crew, and how to differentiate between my queer lady gaze and the Male GazeTM - or all of the shots of Charlize Theron in amazing coats and fishnets. What I mean is that everything about this movie is sexy, from the music choices to the cinematography. It's set in 1989, in spite of how well fitting all the clothing is and how understated everyone's makeup is, so the soundtrack makes copious use of 80s synth pop from around the world. The shots transition in interesting ways and the whole movie has a distinctly cool colour palette that feels perfectly fitting with the era. The scenes in Lorraine's Berlin hotel room are a dark neon fever dream and I really did enjoy the use of colour and lighting through the whole movie.
Story wise, I felt like they loosened up a little to give leeway to the visual. It was pretty clear that this was a vehicle for the subversion of the spy machismo, so the focus was on looking slick and Charlize Theron killing lots of people. A lot of key plot points are withheld until the very end of the movie, but it's pretty easy to just excuse anything that seems not to fit and to go along with the ride. I did wish that the writing had been tightened up just a little, and that the transitions through time hadn't been quite so many and so seemingly random. There's so much emphasis on twists and crosses that it just feels often overwrought. If you're going to get us to just enjoy the ride, then make that easy to do.
I did have a great time with this movie, but I feel emotionally caught up in it. I wanted it to do better, because I want women to be at the helm of everything. I want to see this movie with a women in charge behind the scenes and see how that feels. I want to watch a movie set in the the late 80s and not be distracted by how anachronistic the characters in the background seem to be. I want to buy a trench coat.
Rating: 7.5/10
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