Atomic Blonde

So, Atomic Blonde starring Charlize Theron will be out in a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to it. I saw the Blue Monday/Personal Yeezus version of the trailer; it looks like they just decided to let Charlize be James Bond, and I am HERE FOR IT.

edited 26th Jul '17 9:01:54 PM by wisewillow

Atomic Blonde is holding in the mid-70s on Rotten Tomatoes right now, with a lot of praise for the action but a great deal of confusion towards the plot. I've been seeing this sentiment going around.

I really wanna see this but looking over the plot it seems a lot more complex in terms of structure than John Wick. Could be interesting.

If the timelines matched I'd have liked to see them cross over.

Not that I'm familiar with John Wick, but I don't think this and John Wick are in the same universe.

Also, in relation to that, who here has read The Coldest City?

I've gotta say, I was mostly kinda bored by the movie. The action scenes were good, but it's not really an action-packed movie, not the kind that makes watching just for the action scenes worthwhile, anyway.

The problem is the movie's plot is really pretty simple and straightforward, but the filmmakers have absorbed the idea that spy movies are supposed to have complex plots full of double crosses and labyrinthine schemes, so they put in a bunch of twists and betrayals and this-character-isn't-who-you-thought-they-were stuff, plus a framing device where Theron's character is describing the events of her mission to her superiors, except neither she nor her superiors trust each other. But almost none of that actually matters to the story; it's just sort of stuffed in around the story to make it seem more complicated than it really is.

I liked it about as much as I liked the last several bond movies. Which is to say "I was more than adequately entertained, but not floored". One thing, however: Would movies please stop killing Sofia Boutella? Her carreer is edging into Sean Bean territory.

I just watched the movie this Friday, and what I took from the end was basically: someone dies under the label of "Satchel", yet did Satchel really get away with it all?

edited 6th Aug '17 3:01:14 PM by manhandled

Saw this today. Mostly pretty good, but had a hard time keeping track of all the backstabs and did they really need to off the adorable French lesbian? She was adowable. Got a posthumous revenge, at least.

Even better, in the original graphic novel The Coldest City, the French agent was a guy.

I also thought the ending dragged a bit and the revelation that Lorraine was an American triple agent seemed unnecessary - though on the plus side, I was worried that the Russian bigshot and his pompadoured henchman would pull a Karma Houdini, so that solved that at least.

edited 10th Aug '17 7:51:50 AM by HamburgerTime

The plot was by far my favourite part of the film. I'm far too bored with spy films which are actually just superhero films. I like that this film is actually about intel gathering. The plot isn't actually all that complex, the complexity is just in watching people's suspicions become realised.

Really I'd like to see a sequel with the character. Perhaps that's difficult to do given that the Cold War is now over. But the twists towards the end of the film have elevated the character for me to one even more interesting.

I think a sequel would kind of miss the point - the movie's all about the people caught at ground zero of The Great Politics Mess Up, and how they're slowly realizing that everything they've done, all they've fought for and all the death and destruction they've both witnessed and caused will be completely irrelevant in a matter of days. You know how James Bond went on hiatus between '88 and '95 while the producers debated whether super-spy narratives were still relevant post-Cold War? If that dilemma were a movie itself, it'd be this one.

By the way, did the two main henchmen have names? The pompadour-ed driver and the Nigh-Invulnerable bleach-blond guy, I mean. Great fight for the latter BTW.

How much does any of that intelligence gathering actually matter, though? Theron's character realizes pretty early on that Perceval intends to double-cross her, so the mounting evidence of that fact doesn't really seem important. None of their intel gathering helps them find the guy who stole the List; he seeks Perceval out to kill him, but gets it turned around on him. And the actually a Russian mole, but actually an American triple agent reveal at the end . . . what does that really have to do with anything that came before it?

I'd say the twist answers the question of if Loraine is motivated by genuine emotion or by pragmatism. Which is a question the film brings up a lot.

So did anyone else kind of hope for a second that was Delphine on the plane at the end, having faked her death somehow and decided to say Screw This, I'm Outta Here with Lorraine with all the bad guys dead?

Yeah honestly that characters death seemed pointless and only really served as the red herring of what Lorraine's motivation was.

Think the fact that the guy that dies in the opening scene was named "James" is supposed to be a Take That!?

I thought that the action scenes were good, but the plot was unnecessarily convoluted at times, and the twist ending of Lorraine being a Satchel and a triple-agent working for the CIA felt a bit tacked on. I'm also not overly fond of the tough as nail Action Girl being often lesbian or bisexual in films (for Fanservice!) while men are always straight, but that's a personal thing. And I think it is possible to catch a liver disease by playing a game of "drink a shot whenever somebody smokes in this film".

As an aside, the fan of 80s music I am was in soundtrack heaven.

edited 4th Sep '17 2:58:27 AM by C105

I was fine with that. It was just disappointing that they played into one of the most overused tropes imaginable by the end. And since they changed a certain element from the comic apparently, it makes the whole thing even more iffy as a result.

Whoa, so today I learned that the original comic has a The Bad Guy Wins ending with a Villain Protagonist Lorraine who really is working for the Russians. As random as the CIA reveal felt I can see why that was changed.

Aye, that would lock you out of keeping her as a protagonist in sequels.

Speaking of which, I'm really looking forward toy he sequel. Now that we KNOW the twist, she's a much more interesting character concept.

In a way, there's still a The Bad Guy Wins Villain Protagonist thing going on. Not to that extent, but the film is stunningly clear in showing that there's very little moral difference between Lorraine, Percival and the KGB. They're all "Satan's little helpers" as Percival put it.

It's a case of shocking betrayal for no damn good reason.

I don't think you can really say Lorraine is nearly as bad personally as Percival or Bremovytch, but all three governments - US, UK, and USSR, are pretty damn amoral themselves given that they're risking people's lives over information that will be irrelevant in mere days.

Percival, Bremovytch and Lorraine are all deeply amoral and ruthless people with innocent blood on their hands (in the very first scene of the film, James ponders that he expected Lorraine would have been the one to kill him and he's rather disappointed she didn't) working for amoral and ruthless governments.

The film has a very John Le Carré-ish take on the Cold War. "When will you realize there's as little worth on your side as there is in mine?" to quote Smiley as he talks to a KGB agent.

I think the film itself gives away its take on the morals of the situation with Percival's speech (spoilers):

"Who won...and what was the fucking game anyway?"

"To win..you have to know what side you're on."