Atomic Blonde (15.)
Directed by David Leitch.
Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman and Toby Jones. 115 mins
Atomic Blonde's big idea is to retrofit slick contemporary noughties (or is it tenies) action vacuity onto a tale of Cold War espionage. It's Tinker, Tailor, Total, Badass, with Theron as a British agent sent into Berlin during the days before the Wall came down to rescue a list of double agents, all to an eighties soundtrack. It's a horible waste of thoroughly good playlist.
I hated this movie, and did so from the very first minute, when Blue Monday started up on the soundtrack. The eighties music never lets up: David Bowie's Cat People is next, followed by tracks from Depeche Mode, Queen, George Michael, A Flock of Seagulls and the inevitable 99 Luftballoons. I enjoyed tapping my toes to the songs, but not their use as desperate trinkets of ingratiation, “Please be my friend – look, we like the same stuff.” It takes skill to match pop music to movie scenes, and Blonde is continually tin-eared in its selections; just as it is tin-hearted in its characterisations.
It's knowingly eighties in that it is all style and no substance and the style becomes numbing. Both Theron and McAvoy put a bit too much effort into their British accents, so that they both sound a bit too perfect, and thus a bit fake. Atomic Blonde made me think of what a Danny Boyle action film would be like – busy attempting lots of new things, trying to be clever, pulling off little twist, while largely missing the point of it.
Now I appreciate that my hatred for this film is disproportionate to its failing. For a $30 million production it is impressively mounted and some of the action sequences are quite bold. Director Leitch is officially making his debut here, though it is now being put about that actually he was a de-facto co-director of John Wick. The style is similar with lots of audaciously choreographed, and hideously violent, single shot fight scenes.
I love the Wick films yet hated this, partly because the Wick films exist in their own little protective bubble. While Keanu carries it off with an air of absurd zen detachment, Theron seems almost freakishly committed to her performance. She does a bit of nudies, takes a lot of beatings, looks pristine in every shot and wants us to know just how much effort she is putting into it. From Aeon Flux to Fury Road, she has consistently taken roles that see her applauded for providing strong female role models; in much the same way John Wayne used to show us what it meant to be a real man. Daniel Craig always seems to apologetic or defensive about playing a cold hearted assassin; I can't see how having a woman do the same thing just as well is an equality that particularly benefits anyone.
Contemporary fatuity reaching back to greet 80s fatuity may seem like a reasonable premise – after all the 80s was the moment we really started to embrace the ugly; when the corporate suits took over Hollywood and started to impose their credo of formula and franchise on film production. The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War though was the start of a brief, we-knew-it-wouldn't-last window of optimism where we could hope that humanity might stumble fortuitously onto a progressive path. That hope finally went with 9/11; Atomic Blonde suggests that hope was never real anyway, we were always just as facile as we are now.
Directed by David Leitch.
Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman and Toby Jones. 115 mins
Atomic Blonde's big idea is to retrofit slick contemporary noughties (or is it tenies) action vacuity onto a tale of Cold War espionage. It's Tinker, Tailor, Total, Badass, with Theron as a British agent sent into Berlin during the days before the Wall came down to rescue a list of double agents, all to an eighties soundtrack. It's a horible waste of thoroughly good playlist.
I hated this movie, and did so from the very first minute, when Blue Monday started up on the soundtrack. The eighties music never lets up: David Bowie's Cat People is next, followed by tracks from Depeche Mode, Queen, George Michael, A Flock of Seagulls and the inevitable 99 Luftballoons. I enjoyed tapping my toes to the songs, but not their use as desperate trinkets of ingratiation, “Please be my friend – look, we like the same stuff.” It takes skill to match pop music to movie scenes, and Blonde is continually tin-eared in its selections; just as it is tin-hearted in its characterisations.
It's knowingly eighties in that it is all style and no substance and the style becomes numbing. Both Theron and McAvoy put a bit too much effort into their British accents, so that they both sound a bit too perfect, and thus a bit fake. Atomic Blonde made me think of what a Danny Boyle action film would be like – busy attempting lots of new things, trying to be clever, pulling off little twist, while largely missing the point of it.
Now I appreciate that my hatred for this film is disproportionate to its failing. For a $30 million production it is impressively mounted and some of the action sequences are quite bold. Director Leitch is officially making his debut here, though it is now being put about that actually he was a de-facto co-director of John Wick. The style is similar with lots of audaciously choreographed, and hideously violent, single shot fight scenes.
I love the Wick films yet hated this, partly because the Wick films exist in their own little protective bubble. While Keanu carries it off with an air of absurd zen detachment, Theron seems almost freakishly committed to her performance. She does a bit of nudies, takes a lot of beatings, looks pristine in every shot and wants us to know just how much effort she is putting into it. From Aeon Flux to Fury Road, she has consistently taken roles that see her applauded for providing strong female role models; in much the same way John Wayne used to show us what it meant to be a real man. Daniel Craig always seems to apologetic or defensive about playing a cold hearted assassin; I can't see how having a woman do the same thing just as well is an equality that particularly benefits anyone.
Contemporary fatuity reaching back to greet 80s fatuity may seem like a reasonable premise – after all the 80s was the moment we really started to embrace the ugly; when the corporate suits took over Hollywood and started to impose their credo of formula and franchise on film production. The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War though was the start of a brief, we-knew-it-wouldn't-last window of optimism where we could hope that humanity might stumble fortuitously onto a progressive path. That hope finally went with 9/11; Atomic Blonde suggests that hope was never real anyway, we were always just as facile as we are now.