ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)

Studio:       Focus Features
Director:    David Leitch
Writer:       Kurt Johnstad
Producer:  Eric Gitter, Peter Schwerin, Kelly McCormick, Charlize Theron, A.J. Dix, Beth Kono
Stars:     Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Roland Moller, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, James Faulkner, Barbara Sukowa, Toby Jones, Bill Skarsgard

Review Score:

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Summary:

During the downfall of the Berlin Wall, a covert spy is tasked with retrieving a secret list that will expose a double agent.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Berlin, November 1989 – KGB officer Yuri Bakhtin chases and executes MI6 spy James Gasciogne.

London – Ten Days Later – Bruised and battered, MI6 undercover agent Lorraine Broughton is brought in for debriefing by her superior Eric Gray while agency chief C observes from behind a mirror. Lorraine objects to the presence of CIA officer Emmett Kurzfeld being in the room with them and verbally insults the American.

Several days earlier, Lorraine receives her original assignment. Lorraine is told about James Gasciogne’s murder. Gasciogne, secretly Lorraine’s former lover, was in possession of a list containing names of every spy working for every agency operating in Berlin, including the identity of a double agent codenamed “Satchel.” Gasciogne received the list from a Stasi defector codenamed “Spyglass.” Yuri Bakhtin stole the list from Gasciogne, but did not return it to Moscow. Instead, Bakhtin is believed to be in the wind looking to sell the list on the black market. Lorraine is tasked with meeting maverick MI6 operative David Percival in Berlin and tracking down the list.

Percival meets with Spyglass in East Berlin and learns Spyglass memorized the list’s contents. David uses an underground tunnel to move between both sides of the city.

Lorraine arrives in West Berlin and is picked up by two men. While being driven, Lorraine realizes the two men are KGB agents and a fight erupts, causing the car to crash. Having followed in his own car, Percival arrives and helps Lorraine recover.

Back in East Berlin, KGB operative Aleksander Bremovych torturously interrogates several youths about the whereabouts of Bakhtin and the list. Spyglass is identified as a traitor.

After a cagey conversation with Percival about Spyglass and Gasciogne, Lorraine searches Gasciogne’s apartment for clues. Percival calls the police to slow down Lorraine’s investigation. Lorraine takes down officers arriving at the scene and escapes.

Lorraine confronts Percival with a photograph indicating he is working under his own agenda. She then goes to a bar in disguise and is hit on by Bremovych. French secret agent Delphine LaSalle interrupts the encounter.

Unknowingly bugged by a microphone Percival planted in her jacket, Lorraine picks up an envelope from a contact posing as a watchmaker. Clues on the watch pieces lead Lorraine to a new contact. Two KGB agents trail Lorraine to her meeting location, but she escapes after battling both men and embedding a keychain in one’s cheek. Lorraine meets new contact Merkel on a rooftop.

Lorraine meets next with Delphine. The two women begin a romantic affair. Lorraine whispers a secret about Percival into Delphine’s ear.

After meeting with the watchmaker about selling the list, Bakhtin confronts Percival. Percival kills Bakhtin, takes his watch, and later begins decoding the list.

Acting on a directive from Eric Gray, Emmett Kurzfeld meets with Lorraine at the Berlin Wall and cautions her about Delphine. He also passes her a newspaper hiding a phone number. Lorraine calls the number and learns Satchel has been compromised.

Percival meets with Lorraine and tells her Spyglass has the list in his head and must be protected. While Percival meets next with Bremovych to propose exchanging information, Lorraine has another rendezvous with Delphine, during which she suggests Percival is setting her up.

Percival and Lorraine devise a plan to sneak Spyglass to safety in West Berlin, though Percival insists that they escort the man’s wife and daughter too. Merkel works on falsifying papers for everyone involved.

In disguise, Lorraine escorts Spyglass through a parade of protestors while Percival guards the woman and child. Merkel uses his network of nearby people to raise umbrellas that confuse KGB snipers attempting to kill Spyglass.

Without anyone noticing where the gunfire came from, Percival clandestinely shoots Spyglass. Lorraine rushes her wounded charge into a nearby building and protects him from a stairwell full of attacking assassins. Lorraine and Spyglass escape the building and run over their KGB pursuer in a stolen police car.

Spyglass and Lorraine’s vehicle is sideswiped and crashes into water. Unable to free Spyglass from the wreck, Lorraine is forced to watch him drown before she swims to the surface.

Merkel rescues Lorraine and sneaks her to the other side of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Percival delivers Spyglass’ wife and daughter to the CIA officer.

Lorraine finally realizes Percival had her bugged. She then warns Delphine that Percival set up both of them.

While Lorraine searches for him, Percival infiltrates Delphine’s flat and murders her. Lorraine arrives too late for a rescue.

Percival returns to his base of operations and sets it on fire. Lorraine discovers an envelope from Delphine and finds photos inside of Percival meeting with Bremovych.

Lorraine tracks down Percival and shoots him in an alleyway. Lorraine takes Percival’s watch. She then addresses Percival as ‘Comrade Satchel’ before executing him.

Gray is furious to learn that Lorraine killed Percival. However, C buries the case to avoid the embarrassment of revealing that Satchel was unknowingly part of MI6.

Paris – Three Days Later – After flashbacks show Lorraine splicing audio recordings and setting up events to make Percival look like the traitor, Lorraine meets with Bremovych in a hotel, revealing she is really Satchel. Lorraine hands over the watch.

Bremovych double-crosses Lorraine by bringing in henchmen to kill her. Having hid a gun in an ice bucket however, Lorraine kills all of Bremovych’s men.

With Bremovych at gunpoint, Lorraine tells him that every piece of false info she had been feeding him was intended as a rip in the Iron Curtain. Lorraine says, “I want my life back” and, “I never worked for you, you worked for me” before executing Bremovych. Merkel cleans up the scene.

The watchmaker escorts Lorraine to an airplane where she meets with Kurzfeld, revealing she had been working for the U.S. government all along as a triple agent. Kurzfeld palms the watch containing the list.

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Review:

November 1989: Against a backdrop of fiery tension readying to bring Berlin to a boil, undercover agent Lorraine Broughton is on a secret assignment working both sides of the Wall for MI6.  Her mission is to recover a stolen list outing the identities of every spy from every international organization currently operating in Germany.

The list is in the hands of a rogue KGB operative who killed her ex-lover to get it, and Lorraine’s only contact on the ground is a maverick MI6 plant believed to have gone native himself.  Making matters worse, the list is said to reveal the true name of a duplicitous mystery man codenamed “Satchel.”  In the wrong hands, this information could bring the entire world out of its Cold War and into nuclear winter.

Unable to trust anyone, including her new partner, Lorraine is already caught in a web of deceit, danger, and double-crosses before donning her first disguise.  Obtaining the list is her objective, but so is staying alive.  For that, Lorraine needs every ounce of solo skill, strength, spycraft, and savvy she possesses to stay two steps ahead of everyone else.

Traitorous turncoats, black market wheeling and dealing, secret passages to subterranean tunnels, and unrelenting assaults of sniper fire and close-quarters combat.  If it’s in the spy cinema playbook, “Atomic Blonde” has it in spades.

For an espionage thriller thick with intrigue, the main story is slim on essential substance.  Kurt Johnstad’s script, adapted from the Oni Press graphic novel “The Coldest City” written by Antony Johnston and illustrated by Sam Hart, has more exposition than necessary since its primary function is to springboard suspense.  Quite a lot occurs constantly, yet when the side noise is drowned out, “Atomic Blonde’s” plot points play like MacGuffins moving everyone from one setup to the next.

But how seriously are such spy stories to be taken anyway?  After all, in what bumbling butterfingers arena of espionage is it plausible for a Rosetta Stone of international spy names to exist, much less end up handled like a hot potato?

Coherently connected dots be damned, because what works for 007 works for “Atomic Blonde.”  You come for blistering action, breathtaking escapes, and beautiful setpieces.  You stay for the star, and “Atomic Blonde” has a big one in Charlize Theron.

Want hot take hyperbole to hammer home how much Theron grabs the movie by the throat and makes it hers to command?  John Wick and James Bond have met their match, as there hasn’t been an action heroine this explosive since “Kill Bill.”  Charlize Theron channels the full range of her charisma and sensational style to power a presence that is bigger, bolder, and as badass as Bourne.

Director David Leitch soaks scenery in sexy neon noir style.  “Atomic Blonde” isn’t just set in 1989, where a terrifically curated retro soundtrack makes music a chief helix of the film’s DNA.  It’s set in a femme fatale world of stiletto heels, foreign accents, and lipstick on cocktail glasses, and all of it is drenched in red light and cigarette smoke swirls.

Cinematography is cheekily overblown in moments such as James McAvoy striding in slow motion while backlit by fireworks, or in repeated shots of a rotating camera ascending/descending at dizzying angles.  But that kind of color is critical to “Atomic Blonde’s” comic book core and a large part of its simultaneously gritty and glitzy cinematic charm.

Movies like this live or die on visceral value and “Atomic Blonde” pumps enough blood for ten hearts to handle.  Tension routinely ratchets from Jackie Chan-like environmental excitement where anything and everything within reach can and is used as an instrument of crippling pain or devastating death.

Whether it is a keychain jangling from the cheek of someone stabbed in the face or a bad guy literally beaten with a rubber hose, “Atomic Blonde’s” action speaks for itself with a scream every chance it gets.  And it gets plenty of them, particularly during a stairwell scene, staged as one singular shot from a camera as carefully choreographed as the gunplay and martial artistry, which is destined to be talked about as one of the most energetically engaging fight sequences of all time.

David Leitch’s hyper-charged direction is on full display.  Charlize Theron and her costars bring all they have to the table and then crack it with the weight of their collective chemistry.  The movie many not develop a deep or unique story, but who needs it when “Atomic Blonde” has the sights and sounds of a sumptuous action epic sizzling with style.

Review Score:  80

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