Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde

Great action movies, such as Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Mad Max Fury Road, benefit from strong visual storytelling, impressive stunts, a simple plot, engaging characters, and expert editing. Atomic Blonde is visually garish, almost entirely talking (with boring, childish dialogue), an overly complicated plot that gets bogged down in its own details, uninteresting characters, bland editing, and exactly one interesting fight scene. It's a bad action movie.

With Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, and Toby Jones, it's good to remember that a great cast in no way reflects the actual quality of the film. Theron is given hardly anything to do because she doesn't have a character to play. She does her fighting scenes well and does what she can with the boring dialogue, but there's no reason to be invested in her character because she doesn't really have a reason for anything she's doing other than it's her job, and has no personality or any real backstory. The Bride in Kill Bill is a relatively simple character, but she has a clear motivation for her actions and has an interesting backstory. Maybe in the graphic novel Theron's character is like that, but in the movie they clearly just went off the word "badass" and then half-assed the rest of it. James McAvoy is fun, because he just can't help it, but anyone else playing that character would reveal that he's flat and devoid of personality as well.

If I heard a talented stunt coordinator (the one who directed that original Deadpool short that everyone loved) was finally directing his own action film, I would assume that the movie would have all sorts of fun and creative action scenes, and I would then be punished for assuming such a thing. The movie's one memorable action sequence is the massive long-take scene, which doesn't have anything to actually get invested in, it's just impressively shot. Every other action scene is small and poorly edited. There's nothing creative or smart about the action either, it's just punching, shooting, and stabbing, and it's few and far between. Instead it's mostly talking. Bad talking.

The director tries to use music to enhance the handful of action scenes, but somehow manages to choose the wrong song every single time. Instead of choosing fast-paced rock songs, or an ironic song that juxtaposes the action, he chooses songs like "Major Tom" and "I Ran" that are slow-paced and don't fit what's happening on screen at all. It's clear he didn't think about the music ahead of time and just had his music supervisor pick random 80's songs that everyone knows like "99 Luftballoons." They even directly steal from Inglourious Basterds and have Charlize Theron get ready to go kill people to David Bowie's "Putting Out the Fire", only they make it flat and uninteresting.

I can't remember a single plot detail, or anything about any of the characters, or a word of dialogue. It's a passionless, forgettable, poorly made action film that has no pulse. Look up the long-take sequence on YouTube though, because it is impressive. Other than that, this is one isn't worth anyone's hard-earned two hours.