I watched this today. The actions scenes are among the best I’ve ever seen. There were so many that were one long shot, just super well done. No shaky cam, Thank Og! Based on the action, it is a 10 out of 10. Story wise though I didn’t feel like it was quite as good. Especially in the first half it seemed very disjointed and jumping around. There was two things in particular that I won’t spoil in the OP that I just felt was really odd and not well explained even with the ending. Maybe when I re-watch it (when it comes at home) it might make more sense. If you go into this movie expect a passable plot and killer action I think you’ll be happy.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I didn’t fully understand the ending sequence of events, particularly who exactly was working for the bad guys.
Yeah same here. It was all very strange. I understand why the writers were trying to make it look like particular characters were good or bad, but based on who ultimately is the good and bad, their actions didn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know, maybe I need to re-watch it.
The action scenes were good. Though the key points of almost all of them are in the trailer.
The non-action scenes were pretty boring.
It floats by on it being Charlize Theron. But the exact same movie with Chris Pine (and it literally could be the exact same movie with Chris Pine) would be, I think, generally ignored. Because that movie comes out six times a year.
Overall I was disappointed in it. Between this and Baby Driver it hasn’t been a good summer for me and highly anticipated stylish action movies.
I tend to agree, unless of course Chris Pine had a gay love scene with a fellow spy. Now that would be really noteworthy. Still this was an enjoyable movie. One thing, what was the deal with the ice baths Lorraine kept taking? Was it just because of the presumably extreme muscle soreness, or was there a deeper meaning I missed?
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That’s all it seemed like to me, unless I missed something as well. Maybe suggesting that Lorraine was cold-hearted, but I don’t really think that was the point.
Ice packs and ice baths also have a reputation for reducing visible bruising - seems like a potential goal.
I saw it earlier today, and liked it. One thing that was fun was the view of 1990 era Berlin, what with the architecture. (For example, the movie theater in which they had a shootout.)
She was shown, I believe, getting one ice bath before she’d yet been in a fight. But with the back and forth maybe I misplaced it in the timeline.
As for Chris Pine, I meant literally. Switch him for Theron. It’s no longer a gay scene, just a typical one. Since at no point was anything verbal said about the gayness, this movie literally could have been written with Chris Pine in mind then at the last minute put Theron in with the exact same script.
Which is fine and good and makes the movie more interesting that it is Theron, but doesn’t make the actual script any better.
Are you referring to the ice bath at the beginning of the film? If so, the title card said this was ten days later, so after the events in Berlin (but perhaps before the events in Paris).
I thought it was pretty good but the ending was sort of predictable.
If anybody could summarise the events of the film from the perspective of James Macavoy’s character, I’d be interested. I’m not sure what the hell he was up to.
Best as I could tell, he was happy the way things were, and he was working with his Soviet opposite number not because he was a traitor per se, but in order to maintain the status quo.
That’s how I took it. He had gone “off the reservation”. His brief monologue direct to camera near the end I thought pointed out that he was simply enjoying the ride, and that either side getting The List would have changed the dynamic he was exploiting & enjoying.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the flick. While I enjoyed the action scenes, I occasionally couldn’t help but be a bit doubtful about Theron’s character belting the hell out of a trained combatant who has 20+kgs on her.
One thing I’m curious to hear other opinions on, is whether in the Berlin scenes in particular, if you thought there is any element of the unreliable narrator in the exact sequence of events?
I thought the scenes toward the end, when it was revealed twice who was working for who, was too much. It’s not a matter of just there being too many revelations at the end. Let me give an example of another film that has a couple of revelations at the end - the 1953 film Invaders from Mars. There’s a revelation a minute or so from the end which seems to say that everything is going to be O.K. Then there’s another revelation a few seconds from the end which says that, no, in fact everything is going to be much worse. That worked for me. I think it really scared a lot of kids my age when we saw it on late-night TV in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In Atomic Blonde though, I’m not sure what was the point of the multiple revelations at the end.
I felt pleasantly surprised when a few times she ran into men who could defeat her easily and was thrashed by them.
I figure there’d have to be, though I gave up on trying to follow the plot about halfway through.
That’s one of the things I want to look for when I re-watch it when it releases on blu-ray. I also think there may be elements of that.
I also want to add, the soundtrack was great for somebody of my age. Blue Monday is one of my all-time favorite songs so I loved hearing it, and many of the other songs were great as well. I liked the way the songs were integrated as well. I know other movies have done it as well, and even better really (Resevoir Dogs comes to mind) but I still liked it.
Just happened to catch this in the theater today while I had some time to kill. I clearly missed something, so hopefully you all can explain it to me.
Was Charlize’s character actually intended for the gentleman who memorized the list to die? Because I thought it seemed like she had a lot to lose if the info on the list got out. So did she actually need him to die without it looking like she needed him to die? She seemed pretty upset after she lost him, but later events are now making me question that. Help?
Yes, this. The action, soundtrack, and style were just brilliant—and Theron really carried the movie. Where in too many modern action films (I’m looking at you, Bourne trilogy-or-however-many-there-are-by-now), you have just a rapid cuts of limb connecting with limb, fist connecting with chest, somebody flying through the air, grimaced face, repeat until you’re thoroughly confused about who’s hitting what and where, in this one, you could really follow the action. Plus, Theron wasn’t just some over-the-top action heroine—in many of the fights, she wouldn’t have had a chance if not for reaching for the right key ring/corkscrew/lamp at the right moment, which made things at least sorta believable.
Unfortunately, the problems other films have with the action sequences, it has with the plot. Maybe somebody who paid better attention than I did could extract a coherent story from what’s being shown, but to me, lots of things just didn’t really end up making sense.
But it was nice to look at.