Atomic Blonde

2017 • 114 minutes

About this movie

Oscar®-winner Charlize Theron stars as elite MI6's most lethal assassin and the crown jewel of her Majesty's secret intelligence service, Lorraine Broughton. When she's sent on a covert mission into Cold War Berlin, she must use all of the spycraft, sensuality and savagery she has to stay alive in the ticking time bomb of a city simmering with revolution and double-crossing hives of traitors. Broughton must navigate her way through a deadly game of spies to recover a priceless dossier while fighting ferocious killers along the way in this breakneck action-thriller from director David Leitch (John Wick).

Ratings and reviews

As a Charlize Theron fan I'm disappointed by the thin plot line with scenes that were too staged and didn't flow together to form a coherent narrative. Highly stylized, almost to the point of comic book level, with poor dialogue. Some of the fight scenes were OTT despite Charlize's best efforts and the semi-nudity seemed gratuitous, designed to titillate teenage boys. And just how many fags did they smoke between them? Like that gave them more spy genre atmosphere and gravitas! From a female spy lead perspective, this is closer to Black Widow than to Salt. Hoping next year's Red Sparrow is faithful to the book because we should get some decent character development which was sadly lacking here. Consign this one along with Ghost in the Shell to history.

I was surprised to hear that Charlize Theron had been involved in producing this film, it initially seemed like she was being subjected to a #MeToo saga with all the forced and awkward TMI moments - totally unnecessary and undermined her acting. She doesn’t need to strip off to get a part, so why force all the naked scenes? The fighting scenes were actually laughable. The storyline was predictable and not very engaging. We switched off after half an hour. It’s a fail from me.

I enjoyed this. OK, it had a few 'What!' moments, and i felt the trailer did not match the film, but it was entertaining throughout. This is set in the late eighties, but Charlize reminded me of Glynis Barber, from Dempsey and Makepeace - from 82. As a result, i thought it was early 80s and needed reminding it was late 80s. I thought the action scenes were good, if a little Over The Top sometimes.