Stylish, eye-popping, bouncy. The story, acting, music are energetic and fun. The plot is not realistic even though it references some of the realities of a time and place: Berlin, Germany, 1989. (I like the disclaimer at the beginning that gives the historical background and then says, This is not that story.)
What this is, of course, is an adaptation of a graphic novel, "The Coldest City". The title "Atomic Blonde" is rather campy, though it suggests the nuclear threat that was on everyone's mind at the time.
Reality, also of course, need not apply here. I agree with those who say that this is the answer to the call for a female James Bond. This probably better than the Broccoli people would do it. It is amusing that people - including me - pair this movie with "Red Sparrow" because the latter movie is actually more realistic than this one in its use of a female spy who uses sex first and violence sparingly because she knows she can't sustain a physical fight with ten men (or even one powerful man) without a gun or at least sharp objects.
Charleze Theron is a kick-butt fantasy. She can do anything physical that she has to. Not only fending off multiple male attackers but jumping off of balconies with makeshift ropes and pulleys and counterweights made out of bad guys.
I liked the twists in the plot and the surprise ending. It is part of the fun.
Loraine Broughton navigates a world where she quickly realizes that everybody is out to betray everybody else, and somebody has decided to have everybody gang up on her. Does she whine about it? Only a little. Mostly she just deals with it by shooting or kicking somebody in the head.
The spycraft is a bit contrived not to say outright laughable. Somebody does not understand that the purpose of a code name is to obscure the person or thing the spies are talking about. So "Spyglass" is a very bad code name for a spy or asset. And "the list" is a very bad code name for a maguffin that is, in fact, a list. (I recently read a spy novel by a real life spy in which an operative's code name is "Tulip". See the difference?)
My pet peeves with some critics are that 1) The present generation did not invent feminism. That is not necessarily a thing that is anachronistic about this movie. In the 1980s, women were already making headway into previously male-dominated professions. 2) This movie was not an ad for tobacco but a reflection of how much a lot of people still smoked in the '80s.
