ATOMIC BLONDE — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Let's cut to the chase and talk about the sex in Atomic Blonde. Do I have your attention? I hope so! Because this movie has one sex scene, which star and co-producer Charlize Theron fervently supported as soon as screenwriter Kurt Johnstad suggested it, and it features no men. It's between Theron and supporting costar Sofia Boutella; it starts as a one-night stand; it's devoid of the usual clichés of onscreen lesbian sex; it's literally the only thing even remotely approaching a romantic subplot in the movie. What's more, in years past or in lesser hands, this would be a scene played to titillate straight men, with a character still intended to prefer men. Here, none of that is the case, and the relationship is as incidental -- yet integral to the plot -- as any fling that might be had by James Bond.

All of this significant, and further establishes Charlize Theron, in the wake of her amazing work in Mad Max Fury Road, as a paragon of kick-ass women in modern action movies. You know what she does to most of the men in this movie? She beats the shit out of them!

And she gets her ass kicked too, mind you -- which, as it happens, is also part of what elevates the film. Too long have we seen women who kick ass in movies suffer no visible bruises. David Leitch, here directing his first feature film after a long career as a stunt coordinator and fight designer, goes out of his way to make sure we see the physical consequences of this woman's fighting. There's a fair amount of naked Theron in this movie; very little of it is sexy. Most of it is badass.

Atomic Blonde is to be commended for respecting the intelligence of its audience by refusing to beat it over the head with action sequences as soon as the first scene, and instead takes some time to get the story underway. The story could have still used some improvement, or at least some clarity; I spent a fair amount of time finding it a challenge to keep up, due to a fairly convoluted and occasionally incomprehensible plot.

Someone has a list of double agents, in 1989 Berlin -- the fall of the Berlin Wall being a fascinating backdrop to this story -- and Lorraine Broughton (Theron), among others, are after it. That's all you really need to know, really. Another agent comes to her aid -- or does he? -- and that is James McAvoy, playing a bit of a suspicious blowhard who, thankfully, it never even seems to occur to Lorraine to fall for. The photographer she's far more compelled by (Sofia Boutella) is actually connected to them both. Lorraine is warned to "trust no one," and admittedly that is a bit of an overused concept, but this movie takes it to some refreshing places.

The action sequences are found deeper into the story than usual, and they are so worth the wait, I would argue they are alone what make Atomic Blonde worth seeing. This is a movie that takes a far more realistic approach than the typical action hero with movie-superhuman strengths (which even applies to Bond anymore), and as these people are beating each other to a pulp, you begin to cringe at the pain they must be feeling. Through it all, the fight choreography is truly impressive.

And it occasionally features subtle, artistic touches. Look closely at one of the final fight sequences, in which a gun victim's blood splatters perfectly onto the giant red lips of a woman's portrait on the wall.

This being 1989, the soundtrack is a stellar collection of eighties Brit pop, although I have mixed feelings about the vast majority of the songs being from the early eighties rather than at the end of the decade when the film was actually set. Still, the music, the set design, particularly the costuming, how it's all shot with neon lines, and the action set pieces -- it all comes together to supersede the minor flaws of the script and make for a movie that gets more thrilling as it goes along.

Overall: B+