https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIUube1pSC0
I saw this at a late thursday night showing, but i didn’t get the review written until now. But better late than never.
I love when a movie comes around that you’ve been interested in for months, where you’ve watched one trailer and read a couple of interviews and you’ve been anticipating it for months, and then it finally comes out and you’re genuinely excited to go to the theatre to watch it! Atomic Blonde was just that for me.
Release Date: July 28th, 2017
Genre: Action, Mystery, Thriller
MPAA: 14A
I heard about Atomic Blonde a while back, I knew it was directed by the second director of John Wick (2014), David Leitch, who has also signed on to directed Deadpool 2. So I was genuinely excited to see him helm a film on its own. It was made better because to me this looked like Jill Wick of sorts.
Atomic Blonde is an Action, Mystery, Thriller film about an Undercover MI-6 agent that is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents. What follows is a chaotic and fun film, but is bogged down by a tired story and some script issues.
Atomic Blonde is directed by David Leitch. David Leitch’s only other directed film on his filmography is an uncredited director for John Wick (2014). John Wick was a really fantastic film, it surprised me because it came out of absolute nowhere. My buddy Kyle came into work one day and all he said was “DID YOU SEE JOHN WICK!?” I replied “No, what is that?” and he flipped out saying “I NEEDED TO SEE IT” and to “NOT LOOK UP A TRAILER AND JUST WATCH.” I took his excitement to heart, and blind bought John Wick, and now its one of my favourite films, its so much fun. I expected the same from Atomic Blonde (I almost wrote Jill Wick), where there was definitely fun in this movie, I felt like some parts were unnecessary and almost amateurish in direction. However when Leitch really kicks it into high gear, where theres actually action scenes, is where this movie really shines. The none action scenes it seems like he doesn’t know exactly what to do with the camera, but when he’s doing an action scene, its so masterfully done. I’m genuinely excited to see his take on Deadpool.
Atomic Blonde is written by Kurt Johnstad. His filmography consists of 300 (2006). He has done some other movies like Act Of Valor (2012) and 300L: Rise Of An Empire (2014) but I cannot comment on those as I haven’t seen them and don’t have any interest really. I didn’t think this movie was poorly written, but there was some very weird writing in this movie. I didn’t feel like it was perfect, but it was complimentary to the great action sequences (much like 300, no one remembers 300 for its story, but the style and the action scenes are definitely what stick out in my mind).
Theres a really great scene in a stairwell and a car chase that really show off this great style that Leitch has pulled off. Those scenes to me are genuinely fantastic and may go down as some of my favourite scenes in a movie for 2017.
Atomic Blonde stars Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton (AKA Atomic Blonde), James McAvoy as David Percival, John Goodman as Emmet Kurzfeld and Toby Jones as Eric Gray.
Charlize Theron’s filmography consists of Reindeer Games (2000), The Italian Job (2003), Hancock (2008), The Road (2009), Prometheus (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Kubo And The Two Strings (2016) and The Fate of The Furious (2017). Charlize Theron is an extremely talented actor, who deserves a lot more credit for her talent. She was brilliant in The Italian Job and Mad Max and she blew me away in Atomic Blonde. She was funny, she was awesome, she did most of her own stunts (i actually read that she trained with Keanu Reeves for a bit as he was working on John Wick: Chapter 2). She was really great in this movie, I hope it turns into a franchise as John Wick has because I’d like to return to this world.
James McAvoy’s filmography consists of Band of Brothers (TV Mini-Series – 2001), X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and Split (2016). Honestly, James McAvoy is quickly becoming an actor to watch in my opinion. I think he’s a great actor and he was really able to show his legs when he took under the 23 different personalities in Split (2016). I thought he was great in this movie and was a lot of fun to watch.
John Goodman’s filmography consists of Barton Fink (1991), We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993), The Flintstones (1994), Fallen (1998), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Coyote Ugly (2000), The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Kronk’s New Groove (2005), Cars (2006), Death Sentence (2007), The Artist (2011), Rage {Video Game} (2011), ParaNorman (2012), Argo (2012), Flight (2012), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Monsters University (2013), The Monuments Men (2014), 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), Ratchet & Clank (2016), and Patriots Day (2016). I love John Goodman, I think he is brilliant. I love that he can play any type of role, whether its a drama like Patriots Day (2016) or its a comedy like The Big Lebowski (1998), he always is excellent. Atomic Blonde is absolutely no different for him. In fact there where scenes where I thought John Goodman stole the spotlight from Charlize Theron.
Toby Jones’ filmography consists of Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the voice of Dobby (2002), The Mist (2007), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), Red Lights (2012), and Anthropoid (2016). I am not too familiar with this actor as I haven’t seen a lot from him, but he is easily recognizable. I also thought he was brilliant in Anthropoid, which was my favourite film of 2016. If you’d like to read my thoughts of Anthropoid:
I thought that Toby Jones did a good job in Atomic Blonde. I thought he had great chemistry with Theron and Goodman.
I thought the acting in this movie was overall good. It was a lot of fun to see these actors share scenery together.
Where the movie falls short for me is the story. I felt like this story has been told before, it wasn’t original at all. I felt like my enjoyment was kind of dampened because of that. I also felt like there were really slow parts in the story and in the movie where I felt my interest dwindling a bit. I’m not quite sure if it was the story’s fault or the directors fault. It would be interesting to watch it again at home, well i’ll definitely be buying the blu ray whenever it gets released.
The soundtrack to this movie was absolutely perfect and added a lot of enjoyment to this movie. Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, 99 Luftballoons and even some music by one of my favourite bands HEALTH was on the soundtrack. It was a perfect for this movie and added a lot of authenticity to it as most of the most (maybe all) was from around the time that this movie was supposed to be in.
Overall, Atomic Blonde was a fun movie but had some issues. The issues to me were so apparent that it did dampen my enjoyment of the film a bit.
However I give Atomic Blonde a 3.5/5.
I’m excited to see what comes next from these actors and this director!
Until Next Time!
-Andrew