March 3rd on HBO. My last 2017 viewing of 2017. I was making a mad rush to see a few extra titles from 2017 before the Academy Awards. I actually had wanted to see this while it was in the theater but never got around to it.
The film takes place in 1989 right around the time the Berlin Wall came down. MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) has to go to Berlin in order to retrieve a list of deep cover agents from an East German defector after a fellow agent and her lover is killed. She meets up with David Percival (James McAvoy), an agent on the edge who's also selling western goods like Jack Daniels and designer jeans in East Berlin. Lorraine works her way through intrigue and fistfights to try to get the list. I found it weird that a six foot blonde super model in heels manages to coast through cold war Berlin without being noticed.
She totally blends right in.
The film is based on a graphic novel and is very similar to any Bond, Bourne, Mission Impossible or John Wick film. In fact, director David Leitch was an uncredited co-director of the 1st John Wick film. The plot is pulled right from the 1st Mission Impossible film. The film is told in flashbacks. Lorraine is being debriefed about the mission and she tells her handlers what happened, much like Usual Suspects and very similar to Basic Instinct.
There are a lot of problems with this picture that my friends over at Cinema Sins can delve into better than I can. However, I did like the fact that Lorraine gets tired after a fight and even takes a beating. We get a scene where Lorraine has to take an ice bath to dull the pain. Bourne, Wick and Ethan Hunt never did that. The film received a 77% Rotten Tomatoes rating that is in the ballpark of where it should be. At the end of the day this is a nice change of pace because the protagonist is female (women can clearly kick as much ass as men). It's fun to watch but it's derivative, especially since John Wick 2 was released a few months earlier and trailers for the new Mission Impossible installment have been out.
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