POSSIBLY SPOILERS
This is trying to be the stale beer version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. That film proved (as so many other people have said), that you can have a film which is more style than substance, and still have it be an outstanding film. TMFU has become one of my favourites, for that very reason.
Unfortunately, Atomic Blonde doesn't quite achieve that same level of quality. It has the style down right, with a nice mix of heavy architecture, good soundtrack choices and grungy fashion (though the Girl says it's not terribly accurate - I'll bow to her superior knowledge) and the characters indulge in fight scenes that are fast, painful and bloody.
But I don't seem to care about any of them. Charlize Theron fails to sell her pain throughout all of this, and the other characters tend to be too horrible to really make me want to root for them. James McAvoy is rather fun as the hedonistic head of the Berlin station, but he's still a fairly horrible person. Weirdly, I found myself hoping that Theron's document supplier ended up taking centre stage, since he at least seemed to have some form of heart. Bit of a waste of John Goodman as well really. He's seen a fair resurgence recently (I blame/thank 10 Cloverfield Lane, which he was fantastic in) and he didn't really do enough in this.
To be horribly unspecific and subjective about it, this film lacked the "soul" of TMFU. It is particularly evident when you look at the fight scenes. Some of them have really neat choreography, and are rather clever (I especially enjoyed death by rubber hose), but they have significant failings. There's a bit, about two thirds of the way in, where Theron is fighting off about six people at once. It has some cool moments in it (I will never not enjoy someone being hit by a lamp) but it just started to drag, painfully. I assume they were going for that "my god, I'm so tired, but I must fight, because the alternative is death" exhaustion angle, and it did do a reasonable job of showing the emotional and physical toll it would take on a person, but I found myself both bored and not really caring at that point whether she lived or died. Which isn't really encouraging in a protagonist.
And finally, the end is just a mess. Okay, it's a spy film, there's going to be some element of scheme overlap, but it just gets silly. I can't suggest you go watch this one.
Not recommended.
Tagged: Film Spy fiction Guns and explosions Fiction Cinema