Review #1,271: 'Atomic Blonde' (2017)

There is a scene about two-thirds into Atomic Blonde that will likely go down in cinema history as one of the most exhilarating displays of visual trickery and good-ol' fashioned stunt work that the action genre has ever offered. Charlize Theron's MI6 spook enters an apartment building in pre-Wall collapse Berlin with a wounded informant and battles gun-toting thugs up and down stairs, in and out of various rooms, using fists, knives, a crowbar, and just about anything else she can lay her hands on. It's a kinetic, utterly dazzling set-piece that eventually takes the violence outside and into a moving car, all in one long, mind-bogglingly complex take. It comes as no surprise that David Leitch, an uncredited director behind 2014's sleeper hit John Wick, is the man calling the shots.

This spectacular moment justifies whatever entry fee you paid to see Atomic Blonde, and highlights just what can be achieved with action cinema when a director like Leitch is the puppet-master behind it. Yet it also underlines the lack of heart and intrigue contained within the rest of this tale of double-agents and double-crosses whenever Theron's Lorraine Broughton isn't kicking butt. She is sent to a Berlin bristling with tension and distrust after MI6 agent James Gascoigne (Sam Hargrave) is murdered by KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin (Johannes Haukur Johannesson) and a wristwatch containing a microfilm list of intelligence agents is stolen. Her task is to find the list, assassinate a double agent known as Satchel, and rendezvous with David Percival (James McAvoy), a fellow agent who has recently 'gone feral'. Matters are complicated when Lorraine falls for young French agent Delphine (Sofia Boutella), and Stasi informant Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) reveals that he has memorised the contents of the microfilm.

Based on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart's graphic novel The Coldest City and re-titled Atomic Blonde to suit the 80's setting, the film looks slick, colourful and chocked full of period detail. While the grey streets of Berlin are laced with ice and stalked by shadowy double agents, the interiors show the German capital in 1989 as a catwalk for the newest fashions and a platform for great music. Theron dons a variety of outfits to suit whatever role she is playing in her mission, naturally looking great in the process, and will likely make many teenagers' dreams come true in her steamy scenes with Boutella. It's all very superficial, with very few characters succeeding to engage on an emotional level. Spyglass, a man trying to save his family from falling into the hands of the Russians and using every tool at his disposal to do so, is the most interesting character in the film. Marsan is always a delight to watch, and it's a shame he doesn't feature more than he does.

Although she certainly looks terrific, Lorraine doesn't really seem to do all that much. Her approach is to enter a room looking fabulous, receive information from the dodgiest-looking person in there, and proceed to dispatch anybody foolish enough to confront her. She's a wafer-thin protagonist, but Theron brings a great physicality to the role, and the actress is now the most accomplished action star working today. As Percival, McAvoy continues to impress with his ability to juggle the good guy, bad guy act. He did so to great effect in Trance and Split, and here he injects a Tyler Durden-esque fashion sense and swagger to his punk-rock rogue agent who may be Lorraine's largest obstacle. Ultimately, Atomic Blonde is a handsome, exciting action movie with fantastic physical performances all round and a central set-piece that will leave you as breathless as its participants. Anyone hoping for a deeper exploration of the shady world it so wonderfully sets up will leave frustratingly underwhelmed.


Directed by: David Leitch
Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Sofia Boutella
Country: Germany/Sweden/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,221: 'Fast & Furious 8' (2017)

By the time Paul Walker bailed and Vin Diesel only bothered to show up for a wink-and-a-smile cameo back in 2003 with the third instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise, Tokyo Drift, it seemed like the series started by Rob Cohen in 2001 as an entertaining Point Break rip-off was done and dusted. 14 years later, the eighth entry sits happily as the eleventh highest-grossing movie of all time, raking in a whopping $1.2 billion at the box-office. Having evolved from low-key crime thrillers with a street-racing twist to all-out, physics-defying spy adventure blockbusters, audiences are clearly not done with Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his street-hood 'family'. The film's alternate title of The Fate of the Furious - keeping up with the series' trend of frustratingly difficult-to-follow title meddling - suggests that this may be the most ridiculous, balls-to-the-wall spectacle yet, and it certainly lives up to its billing.

Ever since previous fan favourites were cherry-picked to inexplicably form the gang of ass-kickers-for-hire the movies are now built around, the cast has rapidly expanded and individuals have been reduced to little more than the odd one-liner. When Dwayne Johnson's oiled man-mountain Hobbs was introduced to add some spice and charisma to a stagnant series, Vin Diesel found himself in the awkward position of hogging screen-time from an actor everyone would rather be seeing. This is very much Diesel's product and he takes things very seriously, so Fast & Furious 8 sees the two split up into two very tonally different story lines, in a move that may have been made to satisfy the needs of both actors, or to simply keep the two away from each other. Johnson made comments on social media criticising a certain cast member's behaviour, in a thinly-disguised jab at Diesel. The tension isn't evident in the final movie, but it does mean you're likely to spend half the time wishing you were with the former wrestler, especially when he teams up with the returning Jason Statham.

Dom growls and mumbles before turning his back on the gang when his honeymoon with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is rudely interrupted by a hacker known as Cipher (Charlize Theron), who blackmails the big lug into stealing an EMP device. Enter exposition device Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and, for some reason, his partner played by Scott Eastwood, who round up the former car-jackers and criminals to steal it back before chaos is unleashed. And so the two stories unfold: One a moody drama that often turns quite violent, and the weirdly erotically-charged, but nevertheless amusing, penis-comparing adventures of Johnson and Statham. When you're watching a movie in which a submarine is 'jacked', it's clear that the mood of the latter better suits the franchise. Diesel's brooding and Theron's phoning-in don't make for particularly entertaining viewing, especially when it follows a scene of hacked autonomous CGI cars swarming through the city streets like a hoard of fast-moving zombies.

Characters seem to fill every inch of the screen, and it was a struggle to remember just what roles returning actors Elsa Pataky, Luke Evans and Djimon Honsou had played previously, although anoraks will have no trouble. To say it is a convoluted mess driven by a McGuffin would be an understatement, and it could be argued that this plot has been done before a few films ago. Nevertheless Fast & Furious 8 delivers when it fires up the nitrous oxide. While there's nothing to match Hobbs' Gatling-gun rampage in part 7, there is a punchy prison breakout scene, Tyrese Gibson ice-skating on a car door, and the aforementioned submarine. You came here for fast cars, and they are worked into the story whether it makes logical sense or not. If only Diesel would lighten up and not take a series built on fun so damn seriously, this could have been so much better. Fingers crossed for the Johnson/Statham spin-off though.


Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Scott Eastwood, Nathalie Emmanuel
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #916: 'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015)

Attempting to piece together the chronology of Max Rockatansky's four-movie journey between 1979 and 2015 would be to miss the point of the series altogether. Max Max (1979) was a raw slice of grindhouse that just happened to be financially successful and genuinely brilliant, and has since evolved into something so wildly imaginative and increasingly insane that to try and piece together how many years have elapsed since Mel Gibson's youthful Main Force Patrol officer watch his family murdered and how he has suddenly shrunk and become Tom Hardy would be as deranged as the franchise's latest instalment, Fury Road.

Whether it's a re-boot or a continuation of the story we haven't seen since 1985's Beyond Thunderdome, we are plunged back into the familiar, post-apocalyptic Australian plains (although it was shot in Namibia) inhabited by obscene punks, raging warlords and ragged rebels. Following a nuclear holocaust, fuel and water is scarce, and the residents of the Citadel are ruled over by the ageing Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a hulking monster of a man with a breathing apparatus strapped to his face. Max (Hardy) is captured and is used as a 'blood bag' for War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), and when Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe's lieutenants, goes AWOL with an armoured truck full of Joe's many wives, Nux and a small army pursue with Max strapped to the front of his vehicle.

Like its predecessors, Fury Road has little in way of a plot. Similar in many ways to Max Max 2, the film is little more than one huge chase with precious few quiet moments in between. Hardy is as reserved a Max as Gibson was, but strangely lacks the charisma that has propelled Hardy to recent superstardom. Yet Max is more in the background, playing second fiddle to the battering ram that is Furiosa. One-armed, shaven-headed and raccoon-eyed, Theron is in equal measures extremely sexy and utterly intimidating, offering glimpses of vulnerability as her trust in Max becomes more cemented. Furiosa's drive is that she wants to get back to her homeland, which is now little more than a distant memory from her childhood, and Max just happens to be along for the ride. But character development is left in the dust of what is ultimately one humongous chase set-piece.

Although he is now 70 and his recent work has consisted of Happy Feet (2006), Happy Feet 2 (2011) and Babe: Pig in the City (1998), director, writer and producer George Miler shows no signs of losing his touch. Fury Road is the most aggressive Max Max yet, complete with acrobats on huge wires who bend into other vehicle's to attack from above, War Boys getting themselves pumped for violence by spraying a powerful drug called Night Fume onto their lips, and an electric guitar player who sprays flame from his instrument and is backed by a hoard of drummers. Everyone involved in creating the stunts should be extremely proud, as what could have been repetitive turns into a two-hour adrenaline rush. It's not the masterpiece that it has been heralded by critics and audiences alike, but it has breathed life back into a genre stuffed with CGI and former wrestlers.


Directed by: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #495: 'Prometheus' (2012)

In the past fifteen or so years, there has been plenty of talk of Ridley Scott returning to the world he created in his masterpiece Alien (1979), be it a sequel, a prequel, or a spin-off of some manifestation. Since the early 2000's, Scott has had a script entitled Prometheus, a story that would set out to depict the origin of the Alien species, but along came the dire Alien Vs. Predator (2004) and the project sort of went out the window. But Scott's interest was never completely lost, and in 2009, the script was re-written to form a plot that would be set in the same universe, but following its own story and mythology, and would attempt to delve into humanity's creation, taking inspiration from wall paintings, ancient scripture, and the religions of ancient civilisations.

Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover an ancient cave painting in Scotland that they believe as final proof of alien astronauts visiting the planet, to be received and worshipped as gods by long-dead civilisations. Forming a map to a distant constellation they believe to hold the answers, Shaw, Holloway and a crew of geologists, soldiers, corporates, and android David (Michael Fassbender), set out on a two-year trip to reach it. When they awake, they wander into a large structure where they find the dead body of a large alien, lying untouched for thousands of years. They believe this to be an 'Engineer' - one of our creators. Unbeknownst to the crew, David takes a sample of a strange black fluid they find covering a set of strange cylindrical blocks and begins his own secret research.

While this has received general unfavourable reviews from the critics, I have admire Ridley Scott's decision to avoid the obvious and tackle a much more existential, thoughtful approach to an ambitious story. After the massive success of the Alien franchise (now a mockery of itself with recent ...Vs. Predator incarnations), expectations would be that the famous beasties would make an appearance to appease fan-boys and audiences wanting to be spoon-fed shit they've seen before. But Prometheus is very much a completely new vision, and Scott has created an old-fashioned space opera that harks back to the philosophical pondering of the golden age of sci-fi, and one that opts for suspense and atmosphere rather than blood, guts and killer aliens.

Yet while the approach is extremely admirable, the film over-reaches itself, struggling to contain the massiveness of its ambition into a feature-length running-time (I would have much preferred a patient, three-hour film), and inevitably becomes a bit of a bumbling mess. It asks far too many questions that it can't (and doesn't) answer, leading to many scenes and occurrences that become downright confusing, and makes some plain odd decisions (why employ Guy Pearce to play an old man? What's with the Janek (Idris Elba)/Vickers (Charlize Theron) sex-talk scene?). Things becomes so baffling, that during its sagging middle section, I found it difficult to work out exactly what the film was trying to be, as the action ground to a halt and Scott's attention goes from one thing to the next, never really falling on a subject as its focus.

If the film has one ultimate saving grace, it would be in Michael Fassbender's phenomenal performance as the android David, who styles himself on Peter O'Toole after spending two years watching Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and appears to know far more that he is letting on. He is so good, that his co-stars suffer in comparison. While I found Noomi Rapace's career-making performance in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) to be as excellent as I was made to believe, here, she struggles to make an impact. Her character is bland, and doesn't have the charisma or the action-hero chops of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley to be a credible lead, and Charlize Theron, playing the corporate bitch-in-charge, can't raise her character above that of a faceless stereotype.

However, I found the films philosophical aspects irresistibly fascinating, and Scott takes ideas and theories published in the 1968 novel Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken, that attempted to apply scientific research to the author's own theoretical studies to argue the existence of alien visitors, documented in artifacts such as the Egyptian Pyramids and Stone Henge, ancient artwork from many global civilisations, and texts including the Bible. It's just a pity the film can't hold this plus the many other plot strands together to make a coherent movie. The visuals are absolutely stunning however, from the cold interiors to the even colder alien landscape, Scott blends gaunt, minimalistic restraint, with stunning explosions of CGI wonder. Hardly worth the wait, but certainly worth your time.


Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Guy Pearce
Country: USA/UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie