Atomic Blonde

The Berlin Wall is falling down, and so is every bad guy in Lorraine's path.  

Charlize Theron gives as good as she gets in Atomic Blonde and as British secret agent Lorraine Broughton, investigating a labyrinthine conspiracy in 1989 West Berlin as the wall dividing the German city begins to crumble, she gets a lot.

It's hard to recall an action heroine receiving as much punishment as Theron's Lorraine, who eases her pain by lowering herself into a bathtub full of ice and then grabbing a handful of cubes to cool her tumbler of vodka.

But Lorraine isn't averse to dishing it out either, whether she's smashing a red stiletto heel into a bad guy's throat or engaging in a knock-down drag-out fight over several storeys of an apartment building that Atomic Blonde audaciously stages in one long, unbroken take.

It's that kind of movie, one that mixes the violent and the vogue. And the stylishness of the execution and the steely commitment Theron brings to her performance is almost enough to carry it through. Almost.

Atomic Blonde is directed by David Leitch, one of the directorial duo behind the excellently ridiculous Keanu Reeves action movie John Wick.

And while the two movies share a similar armour-piercing appeal in their depiction of bullets and body blows, John Wick benefited from a straightforward storyline - punks killed Wick's dog, Wick killed everyone as payback.

Atomic Blonde, however, aspires to be a little deeper and more complex, but the material is fairly pedestrian spy stuff involving defectors and double agents. It's not as smart as it's trying to appear and it sometimes becomes a bit dull as a result.

Lorraine has been dispatched to Berlin to recover a list of secret agents that may have fallen into enemy hands. But with the city degenerating into something of a free-for-all as communism wages a losing battle with capitalism, it's hard to know who to trust.

Station chief Percival (James McAvoy) is spending more time selling decadent items like blue jeans to the youth of Berlin than doing his duty, while rookie spy Delphine (Sofia Boutella from The Mummy) can't possibly be as naive as she appears, can she?

In all honesty, the scenes of supposed cloak-and-dagger intrigue are really just time-fillers until Atomic Blonde gets to the next sequence of Lorraine taking on teams of adversaries in energetic and imaginative ways.

To the movie's credit, it doesn't skimp on the impact of these encounters, with Theron and her opponents making the audience feel each punch and kick. And while Theron tries her hardest to give Lorraine some dimension when she's not getting physical, the movie doesn't offer much assistance.

Atomic Blonde has a gorgeous surface but there's precious little substance to be found beneath the veneer.