Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Leitch
Produced by	Charlize Theron Beth Kono A. J. Dix Kelly McCormick Eric Gitter Peter Schwerin
Screenplay by	Kurt Johnstad
Based on	The Coldest City by Antony Johnston Sam Hart
Starring	Charlize Theron James McAvoy
Music by	Tyler Bates
Cinematography	Jonathan Sela
Edited by	Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir
Production company	Denver and Delilah Productions Closed on Mondays Entertainment 87Eleven
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release date	March 12, 2017 (2017-03-12) (SXSW) July 28, 2017 (2017-07-28) (United States)
Running time	115 minutes[1][2]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$30 million[3]
Box office	$49.9 million[3]

Atomic Blonde is a 2017 American action spy thriller film directed by David Leitch, in his first solo directorial credit, and written by Kurt Johnstad. It is based on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart's 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City, published by Oni Press, which revolves around a spy who has to find a list of double agents who are being smuggled into the West, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The film stars Charlize Theron and James McAvoy, with John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella and Toby Jones in supporting roles.

Atomic Blonde had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 12, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 28, 2017, by Focus Features. It has grossed $49 million worldwide, and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its action sequences, Theron's performance, and the musical score by Tyler Bates, although some criticized the writing and pacing; many have compared the film to John Wick.^[4][5]

Plot

In 1989, before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, MI6 agent James Gasciogne is shot and killed by KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin, who steals the List, a piece of microfilm concealed in a wristwatch that contains the names of every active field agent in the Soviet Union. Ten days later, Lorraine Broughton, a top-level spy for MI6, is brought in to be interrogated by MI6 executive Eric Gray and CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld about her mission to Berlin.

The day after Gasciogne's death, Lorraine is dispatched to Berlin to recover the List and assassinate Satchel, a double agent who has sold intelligence to the Soviets for years and who betrayed Gasciogne. When she arrives in Berlin, she is immediately ambushed by KGB agents working for arms dealer and KGB associate Aleksander Bremovych. Lorraine then meets with her main contact, agent David Percival. After failing to find any immediate leads, Lorraine investigates Gasciogne's apartment and discovers a picture of him and Percival, and is then ambushed by the Volkspolizei. She realizes only Percival knew she was going to the apartment, and begins to suspect him of being Satchel. Lorraine also encounters Delphine Lasalle, a naive French agent, and enters into a relationship with her.

Bakhtin declares his intention to sell the List to the highest bidder. Percival, having been tipped off, kills him and takes the List for himself. He then meets with Bremovych to arrange the transfer of the List to him, which Lasalle photographs. Percival offers to escort the defector who stole and memorized the List, a Stasi officer codenamed Spyglass, and his family across the border to West Berlin. However, he then shoots Spyglass and tips off Bremovych's men, and despite Lorraine's best efforts, Spyglass is killed. Percival then goes to Lasalle's apartment and kills her to cover his own tracks. When Lorraine arrives too late to save her, she discovers the photographs taken by Lasalle proving Percival to be Satchel. As Percival burns his safehouse and attempts to flee, Lorraine tracks him down, kills him, and takes the List.

Returning to the MI6 debriefing, Lorraine presents photographs as well as spliced audio recordings painting Percival as a traitor, and denies knowing the List's current whereabouts, forcing the agency to close the case. Three days later, she meets with Bremovych in Paris, revealing herself to be Satchel. Lorraine gives him a fake List, but Bremovych admits he knows she set him up. Lorraine kills his henchmen, and before killing him reveals she was manipulating events from the very beginning. Later in Paris she meets with Kurzfeld, revealing herself to be an American triple agent planted by the CIA, before returning with him to Langley.

Cast

• Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton, a top-level MI6 field agent.
• James McAvoy as David Percival, an eccentric Berlin station chief who becomes an ally of Broughton.
• John Goodman as Emmett Kurzfeld, a CIA agent working with MI6.
• Til Schweiger as The Watchmaker, a mysterious ally of MI6 who creates and crafts clocks and watches.
• Eddie Marsan as Spyglass, a Stasi defector who stole the List.
• Sofia Boutella as Delphine Lasalle, an undercover French agent who becomes Lorraine's lover.
• Toby Jones as Eric Gray, Broughton's MI6 superior.
• Bill Skarsgård as Merkel, Broughton's MI6 mission assistant.
• Sam Hargrave as James Gasciogne, a deceased MI6 agent who was close to Lorraine.
• James Faulkner as Chief C, head of MI6.
• Roland Møller^[6] as Aleksander Bremovych, a ruthless Russian-German billionaire arms dealer who leads an espionage ring.

Production

An adaptation of the graphic novel The Coldest City was announced in May 2015.^[7] Described by Variety as a "Passion Project" for Theron, she first came across the story five years prior, when her production company Denver and Delilah Productions was sent the then-unpublished graphic novel.^[8] Theron's interest in the first John Wick movie inspired her to get David Leitch, one of the directors, to helm the project.^[9] Leitch eventually left John Wick Chapter 2 in order to direct the film.^[10] According to Theron, the success of Mad Max: Fury Road helped guide the development of Atomic Blonde.^[11] The film features a lesbian subplot that was not in the original book. This came from writer Kurt Johnstad, who suggested it after Theron was "thinking about how do you make this different from other spy movies".^[12] Leitch has insisted that the scenes are not there to be "provocative", but "more about if you are a spy you will do whatever it takes to get information,"^[12] and how the main character "find[s] her intimacies and her friendships in small doses".^[12]

Theron's casting as the lead was announced in May 2015,^[7] while James McAvoy was announced that October. In November, John Goodman was reported as also being in talks to join the film.^[13][14] It was originally hoped that David Bowie would play a part in the film, although he turned down the offer shortly before his death.^[15] To prepare for the role, Theron worked with eight personal trainers, who "basically made [her] puke every single day."^[16] During the process, Theron cracked her teeth from clenching her jaw and had to get them fixed in surgery.^[16] As Theron's training for the movie overlapped with Keanu Reeves' training for John Wick Chapter 2, the two developed a competitive relationship, which included sparring together.^[17]

Principal photography on the film began on November 22, 2015 in Budapest,^[18] and later moved to Berlin.^[10]

Soundtrack

From the start, Leitch felt that using the right songs for the project was crucial. Part of this was attempting to answer the question "How do you reinvent this stuffy Cold War spy movie?"^[19] The soundtrack uses a combination of 1980s songs as well as covers of them.^[19] The latter were used in order to add "a contemporized feeling of the '80s".^[19] The movie's producers were initially worried that they would not be able to get the rights to all the songs that Leitch wanted to use,^[19] but Leitch himself estimated that around 75% of his picks made it into the final product.^[20]

Release

In May 2015, Focus Features acquired distribution rights to the film.^[21] It was initially scheduled to be released on August 11, 2017,^[22][23] before being moved up to July 28, 2017.^[24] The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest on March 12, 2017.^[25]

Box office

As of August 7, 2017, Atomic Blonde has grossed $35.2 million in the United States and Canada and $11.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $46.8 million, against a production budget of $30 million.^[3]

Atomic Blonde was released the same day as The Emoji Movie, and was projected to gross around $20 million from 3,304 theaters during its first weekend.^[26] It grossed $1.52 million from Thursday night previews at 2,685 theaters, which was between the $870,000 made by John Wick in 2014 and the $2.2 million John Wick: Chapter 2 in February 2017.^[27] After making $7.1 million on its first day (including previews), the film went on to open to $18.3 million, finishing 4th at the box office, behind Dunkirk, The Emoji Movie and Girls Trip.^[28] In its second weekend the film dropped 55% to $8.2 million, finishing 7th at the box office.^[29]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 76% based on 208 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Atomic Blonde gets enough mileage out of its stylish action sequences – and ever-magnetic star – to make up for a narrative that's somewhat less hard-hitting than its protagonist."^[30] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a score of 63 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[31] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[28]

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying: "Borrow from Bourne and Bond. Rinse and repeat. This is the recipe for the quite ridiculous, ultra-violent and deliriously entertaining Atomic Blonde, a slick vehicle for the magnetic, badass charms of Charlize Theron, who is now officially an A-list action star on the strength of this film and Mad Max: Fury Road."^[32] Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers praised the cast and fight scenes, giving it 3 stars out of 4 and saying, "It's the fight scenes that count – and they're astonishingly good, from a mano-a-mano beatdown involving Theron's stiletto heel and a thug's jugular vein to a climactic free-for-all in a swanky hotel suite where 99 Luftballons scores every gunshot and gut-punch."^[33]

Jake Coyle of the Associated Press gave the film 2/4 stars, calling it "largely a vacant, hyper-stylistic romp that trades on the thick Cold War atmosphere of far better films".^[34]

References

External links

• Official website
• Atomic Blonde on IMDb
• Atomic Blonde at Rotten Tomatoes