Atomic Blonde

From the co-director of John Wick, this similarly styled action romp puts Charlize Theron front and centre as an unstoppable government operative. Set during the Cold War, it has buckets of visual panache, with eye-popping action choreography that makes it a guilty pleasure. If only that much attention had been given to the script, because both the characters and plot feel naggingly thin, never making the most of the people or places.

The film opens in 1989 London, as top MI6 spy Lorraine (Theron) recounts her recent mission to her British and American superiors (Toby Jones and John Goodman). Sent to Berlin just before the wall comes down, her main job is to discover what happened to a secret list of agents that was being held by a murdered colleague. In East Germany, she makes contact with David (James McAvoy), a fellow agent who has gone native, a little too deep undercover as a black market smuggler. While tracking down this elusive list, Lorraine meets a nervous Stasi officer (Eddie Marsan) desperate to defect to the west, and she faces off against a KGB boss (Roland Moller) with slash-and-burn tactics. And then there's the French spy Delphine (Sofia Boutella), with whom she enjoys rather more than a professional coupling.

James Macavoy in Atomic Blonde

With these kinds of colourful characters and plenty of tangled intrigue, the film should be a lot of fun. But director David Leitch and writer Kurt Johnstad play it in a way that feels oddly simplistic. The whodunit plot never generates much suspense, so the best things about the movie are the astonishing fights and chases, which are shot and performed with real gusto. Each scene has an enjoyably ramshackle quality to it, as if anything can happen at any moment. So quiet conversations shift into brutal battles in the blink of an eye, climaxing in a breathtaking extended sequence shot as if it's a single long take, after which Theron looks like she's been mauled by a bear.

It's great to see an action movie with a realistic edge to the stylised action, from the cool 80s vibe to the way these characters struggle to get up after being knocked down, collecting bruises and scars as they go. As always, Theron is magnetic as a rather glacial operative who never gives up. McAvoy has a lot of fun with his energetic role, and Marsan has so much soul in his eyes that we worry about his fate amid all of these killers. Meanwhile, Boutella offers a bit of lustiness, even if the emotions never quite follow.

Watch the trailer for Atomic Blonde: