Interior Leather Berlin: ‘Atomic Blonde’ is most things a summer movie should be

The best thing about Atomic Blonde is undoubtedly its title. Atomic Blonde is a fantastic title. And it represents what was likely a massive gear change in the conception and execution of David Leitch’s Cold War thriller, originally titled The Coldest City and showing some signs of having been pitched as a traditional, Le Carré-style spy movie: Toby Jones plays an MI6 agent, Eddie Marsan is a mole. It’s all very BBC One Sunday nights. But, somewhere along the way, Leitch (co-director of John Wick) came on board and turned that grey slice of traditionalism into a neon-soaked binge of industrial Bauhaus. James McAvoy and Sofia Boutella are shooting a totally different film to Jones and Marsan. And one woman is caught in the middle: the inimitable Charlize Theron.

Now, Charlize Theron playing English immediately raises suspicions that she’s working for the dreaded Mr. F (Arrested Development fans catch my drift), but goddamn is she a great leading lady. Theron is 42, but doesn’t look a day over 32. And she’s the marquee name on the biggest female-led ‘original’ blockbuster (it’s based on source material, but not of Wonder Woman’s status) since 2010’s Salt. It’s a delicious role — the sort of character whose name doesn’t matter because everyone’s gonna call her The Atomic Blonde anyway (see also: The Accountant, The Young Pope) — and Theron attacks it with everything she’s got. When the film runs risk of objectifying The Atomic Blonde as a comic-book stereotype of ‘Sexy Female Agent’, Theron visibly makes an effort to shift the role in a more interesting direction. This is spite of extensive scenes where she changes from one fashionable turtleneck to another for no rational reason.

The Atomic Blonde is a very serious woman, and it’s a very smart decision to cast James McAvoy, an actor whose versatility becomes more apparent with every project, in a lighter position as her co-star. He gets the jokes, the maniacal laughter, the Sinead O’Connor references, and he’s a delight. The film might’ve failed completely without his performance to dilute the coldness of hers. Eddie Marsan is another MVP: ‘Quiet Genius With Important Information We Need To Protect’ can be a thankless job — ask Paul Dano in Knight & Day — but Marsan is truly charming in his few pivotal scenes. His presence is the making of the film’s much-lauded ‘single take’ set-piece, a cerebral barrage of broken bones and bloody noses; the one moment when the filmmakers drop the relentless (but thoroughly enjoyable) 80s music and expose us to the raw savagery of what The Atomic Blonde does for a living. Equally terrific is a fight staged in front of a projection of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, a contender for most gleefully cineliterate moment of the year.

Of that soundtrack, there are some real gems: “Blue Monday” and “99 Luftballoons” are both used twice (though the use of the latter to accompany a glorified battering of a man with a skateboard kinda represents the antithesis of everything the Nina classic is about), and there’s Bowie aplenty. It’s all a bit broad and on the nose, but that doesn’t stop the smile from spreading when Theron and Marsan go speeding backwards down the street to the sound of “I Ran”.

There are times when the messy construction of the project becomes a distraction: the script has some real low-points, and John Goodman shows up in a token part that really wasn’t necessary. Also in the film: Bill Skarsgard, who’s playing Pennywise The Clown in the upcoming It. As if I hadn’t seen enough of him in the f*cking terrifying trailer that played before Atomic Blonde…

If we’re talking Super-Stylised 2017 Action Movies With Killer OSTs, one can’t help but compare aspects of Leitch’s film to Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver. The soundtrack of Baby Driver was a collection of Wright’s very obscure personal favourites. I haven’t listened to that album very much. Atomic Blonde OST, however, is at the top of my Spotify Recently Played. Sometimes being coolest isn’t necessarily the best. At one point in Atomic Blonde, James McAvoy’s character sarcastically comments “Women are always getting in the way of progress”. Both this and Wonder Woman are very much recycled version of classic male-driven action movie formulas, with the novelty of a woman at the centre. But this is debatably only a necessity on the road to the ideal scenario: when the most original films — films like Baby Driver — can star women, and nobody even notices.