If you thought Agent Lorraine Broughton was a force to be reckoned with after the original Atomic Blonde trailer, a new promo for David Leitch’s spy thriller has arrived in which Charlize Theron’s best-in-class MI6 agent can be seen beating up a goon with a rather stylish shoe. And we use the term ‘beating up’ quite lightly.
Lifted from the pages of Antony Johnston’s graphic novel The Coldest City – Leitch’s adaptation was originally tethered to the same name, before Focus Features decided to change things up – Atomic Blonde opens in the year 1989, just prior to the moment when Germany tore down the Berlin Wall after 28 years of segregation. The city is in a state of political and social change, and when a top-secret dossier containing the names of double agents falls into the wrong hands, it’s up to Charlize Theron’s no-nonsense badass to wade through a web of espionage in order to locate that sensitive information before it’s too late.
If Atomic Blonde sounds familiar, it’s really David Leitch’s direction – coupled with the super-sleek cinematography by Jonathan Sela – that looks set to elevate the Charlize Theron-fronted spy movie above mediocrity. The spirit of John Wick lives on through some of the fight scenes on display in today’s new trailer, and the neon-drenched visuals bring Berlin to life in a way that is hauntingly beautiful. Ditto for Theron’s Lorraine Broughton, who is “not your typical Cold War spy,” according to Leitch.
“She is not your typical Cold War spy. What we set out to do is to turn the spy thriller on its head and make something unconventional. She’s dealing with an existential crisis. She’s navigating this world of lies and figuring out who to trust. Throughout the movie there are twists and turns as she tries to survive this storm of lies…How far will she go to survive? How much will she bend the truth?”
After catching its world premiere at SXSW 2017, our own Matt Donato ruled that Atomic Blonde is a “new-wave action rehash made better by Charlize Theron’s steely spy game and David Leitch’s radiating style.”
Sofia Boutella, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, and Toby Jones are among the ensemble cast, and you can expect Leitch’s super-slick actioner to open in theaters on July 27th.