Atomic Blonde (Dir. David Leitch, 1h 55m)

For all its slick exterior over relatively thin plot, all its 80's Megamix soundtrack, all the shots that linger over Charlize Theron and this film's other female characters' physique, all the wince-inducing gratuitously violent action, all that James-McAvoy in a tank-top silliness and most of all, all that grey borrowed-from-Le Carre intrigue...I adored the hell out of Atomic Blonde. Few films have pulled off the double(or sometimes triple)-crossing of the crumbling Soviet Era world, of spies coming in from the cold and collapsing into a world of MTV and quasi-Weimar decadence with such style, such elegance and razor-wire wit. Fewer films still have come up with a female action movie star that hits as hard, drinks as heavily, and romances quite as much as Atomic Blonde, and the resulting neon-coloured cocktail is a heady rush of a film-it may leave you with a headache and you may wake up with someone you don't quite recognise, but the taste and the experience is incredible.

The Atomic Blonde herself is Charlize Theron, playing the role of Lorraine Broughton, an MI6 agent brought in to clear up the mess a former partner, offed by the KGB, has left in a divided Berlin, track down and return a incriminating and possibly disasterous list of agents, and deal with a double-agent by the cryptic name of Satchel. Whilst the film starts in a debriefing that perfectly punctuates the film, with Broughton brought in grilled by her handler played by Toby Jones and CIA agent Kurzfeld (John Goodman), as to why certain events transpired, we quickly travel back ten days, and Broughton begins to tell her story.

Broughton, as with many of Theron's action roles, is a great character to simply spend time with-we're introduced to her recuperating in her London flat in a bath of ice, a recurrent image the film returns to time and time again-without using a word of dialogue, and with a number of striking shots of Theron patching herself up, the film pencils out her character in her opening scene-tough, resilient, utterly confident, and aware of her own sexual appeal. The fact that the entire sequence is shot with Theron naked but without titillation, the camera simply resting on her bruised form, as it would do in, say, a Bourne or Bond film, further cements the idea of Theron, as she is in, for example Mad Max Fury Road, as an action movie actor, rather than the more vulnerable, and often sexually charged archetype of other female-centric action movies.

There is also, even from the first scene, a sense of physicality from Theron herself- Broughton, as her skills quickly show is clearly a tough woman, and the action scenes in which she fights everyone from Stasi agents to KGB hired goons have a crunching physicality-unlike, for example, the female roles in the works of directors like Michael Bay, where female characters are kept pristine or superficially injured, even if they engage in chaotic and bruising action scenes, Broughton goes through hell in the film, as her injured face and hands show from the first scenes, and the multiple set pieces often leave her crawling or gasping in pain alongside the injuries-without a doubt it's a credit to Theron as an actress for giving Broughton a believable sense of unstoppability, much like Keanu Reeves' John Wick, (to whom, given director David Leitch's work as a assistant director upon both films, there is an undeniable comparison).

Finally, there is a pure stylishness to Broughton, from her introduction to the film's denouement, not only in her dialogue, or in her physical appearance or even in the way she carries herself with real threat and a hint of force throughout the entire movie-whilst the film dresses her in mostly pure blacks and pure whites, either contrasting against the grey monotony of East Berlin, or lit in technicolour neon as she drinks, fights and seduces her way through the twisted web of a seemingly doomed Berlin, it is her face that the film so often focuses upon; her expression determined, or amused or irritated or twisted in pain. Whilst other critics have regarded her as shallow and under-characterised, I think quite the opposite-this is almost the point of the character. We certainly don't criticise Keanu Reeves' likable but monomaniacal John Wick gun-fuing his way through what amounts to a live action videogame, and Broughton is no different-she is, in a way, a reflection of the late 1980s-all style and artifice and excess.

The film in short spreads out from beneath her high heels-the action is slick, the two car chases and multiple fights inside decaying German tenement blocks have a vital quality and a penchant for pummelling action that leaves you as sore as Theron herself, the supporting cast are a den of inequity from James McEvoy's almost feral embedded agent David Percival, who seems equal parts the gone-native Kurtz and the philosophical Batty of Blade Runner, knowing time draws to a close for agents on both sides of the wall, and determined to lose himself in the hedonism and now-ness of the Berlin he clearly adores, whilst Sofia Boutella's naive but intelligent French officer plays a key foil to Brougton herself, and their relationship is dealt with in a much more nuanced way than between many other action movie characters and their love interests. Berlin, above all, is beautiful. This film loves Berlin, for all its imperfections, all its grubbiness, all its culture-clash between western materialism and the creaking death-rattle of communism in the east of the city. This film made me want to experience Berlin for myself, and if that's not a mark of a good film, I don't know what is.

In short, the film is sexy, cool and like last week's Valerian, beautiful to look at-but if the latter is cool in the way old progressive rock albums and yellowed copies of Metal Hurlant are beautiful, in a Gallic retro-modern way where ships and machinery and people are beautiful and exotic then Atomic Blonde is a late Eighties pop video - slick, stylish, sexy in a very knowing (and one may even say empowering) way, and most of all, full of surprises. This may not be the smartest film I see this year but it's one of the coolest I've ever seen

Rating: Highly Recommended