Thursday 10 August 2017

You can't un-fuck what's been fucked

Atomic Blonde (2017)
Chosen by me as I like to go to the cinema a lot.


Held together by a fantastic, bruised and bruising, performance from Charlize Theron, this never quite manages to be more than the sum of it's parts.
There are a couple of fun action scenes, well delivered with clear beats and interesting choreography but the plot tries to be too clever and the stakes dont really make sense making the whole endeavour a little hollow.
It's all couched in cool shot after cool shot, lit with neon, great fashion and an obvious but fun soundtrack (two of the songs here were already used in an early 80s nostalgia fest, and much better movie - Grosse Pointe Blank) which make it perfectly watchable but it lacks the baroque oddness of a John Wick, say, to make it more worthwhile.


Spoilers to follow, though anyone paying attention would not be massively surprised.
I have a weakness for unreliable narrators (The Usual Suspects a favourite of mine) because stories about the art of story-telling (Neil Gaiman's stock in trade) are endlessly fascinating to me.
But this one doesn't really serve any purpose except to try and delay the obvious and unpackaging it doesnt reveal layers instead it makes the whole thing seem pointless.

No comments:

Post a Comment