Movies: Atomic Blonde

Ugh.

Okay, I haven't read the source material. But I knew how this story was going to play out within the first five or ten minutes of the film. And I could tell it had all come from men. Because this is a male fantasy masquerading as a strong female story. There are a lot of those, especially in comics and graphic novels, which is where this originated.

Sigh.

Charlize Theron stars as Lorraine Broughton, MI6 agent sent to Berlin in the weeks before the Wall comes down to retrieve a MacGuffin list of agents (remember Skyfall?). Yawn. Her contact is David Percival (James McAvoy, with not enough to do). The list is missing and too many people seem to know who Broughton really is, so she spends a lot of time fighting off people, and the movie is really just one action sequence after another strung together by a plot none of us actually cares about. We don't even care much about the characters because we don't know them and aren't made to particularly like them. This movie is an excuse for a soundtrack, nudity, and blood. That's about it. You see the "twist(s)" coming miles away thanks to the absolute lack of originality. Boo.

Oh, and there's a frame story, of course. Broughton is being debriefed, and you're supposed to wonder why, although it's painfully obvious where everything is headed.

Look, I love a good Cold War story (I even wrote one, though mine is 1960s rather than 80s), but this clearly wasn't made for me. It's for men who want an excuse to stare at women and like to think they're supporting women by watching a movie with a "strong female lead." Or something. Yuck.