How do we know Charlize Theron’s secret-agent character is a stone cold killer? Because this icy blonde bathes in tubs full of ice cubes while drinking Stoli on ice. That’s the subtlety level here, and I am A-OK with it. Because Theron makes one hell of a superspy, and it’s high time she got her “John Wick” moment.
“Atomic Blonde” was directed by David Leitch, co-director of the first “Wick,” and that film’s template is more or less what you’re getting here: One painstakingly choreographed, ultraviolent fight scene after another, interspersed with some amusing chitchat and long shots of your heroine/hero looking damn good.
But it goes one better with a full-throated retro ambiance, from its blue-gray palette to its nonstop goth ’80s soundtrack to its raucous rendering of the Berlin punk scene days before the Berlin Wall came down. Based on the graphic novel “The Coldest City,” this film keeps its comic-book aesthetic front and center.
Theron is Lorraine Broughton, a British MI6 agent on a mission to retrieve a crucial document from a fellow agent (James McAvoy) who’s “gone native” on assignment in East Berlin. She narrates the mission in flashback from a debriefing with her bosses (Toby Jones and John Goodman), who mostly listen impassively, though her description of a steamy tryst with a fledgling French intel agent (Sofia Boutella) has them squirming in their seats.
Theron, who should definitely be on the “next James Bond” shortlist, goes from withering to warrior in seconds flat. Clothed in a succession of slinky, monochromatic period outfits (BOY London! Sweater dresses! Mesh fingerless gloves!), she dispatches handfuls of assailants with haute finesse. Even when her blond bob gets spattered with blood, it ends up looking like stylish pink highlights. But make no mistake, the fighting is brutal: Like the best moments of the “Bourne” movies, her hand-to-hand combat is mostly soundtracked by bare guttural grunts (and punctuated by the occasional audience gasp, at least at my screening).
The plot is a paper-thin excuse on which to hang the action sequences, and sees her teaming with McAvoy’s cagey David Percival to rescue an informant known as Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), who’s in possession of a list of double agents, before Soviet baddies can get to him.
It doesn’t really matter. Just sit back, luxuriate in the tunes and the look and Theron annihilating any lingering notions that women don’t make good action heroes (Gal Gadot, presumably, is cheering her on from the sidelines while counting her box-office returns).
Finally, a humble suggestion for Mr. Leitch: I think the logical next step is a sequel in which John Wick and Lorraine Broughton are each assigned a hit on the other. Call it “Guy Vs. Spy. “