Double Dose: lady spies

Atomic Blonde - 2017, d. David Leitch

Red Sparrow - 2018

The idea of an ass-kicking female spy is not a new one.  The James Bond franchise has been serving up that archetype for most of its existence, although too often as sexual conquests, love interests or damsels in distress and not enough as equals.  Beyond that, however, there haven't been many espionage or spy-action features headlined by women.  Hell, next to James Bond the most popular spy on the planet is Black Widow, and she's only now getting her own solo feature 10+ years after her big screen debut.  The only other female-led spy movies I can think of right now are comedies: Melissa McCarthy in Spy and Mila Kunis/Kate McKinnon in The Spy Who Dumped Me  (and they do not play spies, but rather accidental spies).  A quick google search reminds me that there was also La Femme Nikita, Harriet The Spy, and Salt.  That's not a deep roster.  The spy genre seems tailor made for mid-budget action movies of the Resident Evil/Underworld sort, so it's any wonder why we haven't seen a franchise player as yet.

Television has been kinder, with The Avengers pairing John Steed with no less than three amazing, ass-kicking agents (Emma Peel, Tara King, Cathy Gale), Agent 99 in Get Smart was obviously the superior agent, Alias and Nikita both ran in the early aughts with action/melodrama focus, while Keri Russel in the Americans and Claire Danes in Homeland provided deep critical success for the female-led espionage drama. Killing Eve has reaped the reward for all this groundwork being one of the best reviewed series currently on TV.

Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow are both concerted efforts at providing meaty, dramatic, and thrilling looks at espionage with women in the focal roles in cinema.  Atomic Blonde is a forthright pinch on the female James Bond model, while Red Sparrow is a more winding, character-focused story.  Both are not original creations, however, with Atomic Blonde originating as the graphic novel, The Coldest City by Anthony Johnston and Sam Hart while Red Sparrow is based on the book of the same name by ex CIA agent Jason Matthews.  Both films also have a Cold War vibe, with Atomic Blonde being set at the end of the era, while Red Sparrow is set in modern times but feels wholly of the era.

Atomic Blonde takes place largely in East Berlin just prior to the fall of the Berlin wall.  Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), a top agent for MI6, is dispatched to recover a list that contains the name of every intelligence agent active in the city, as well as discover the identity of Satchel, a double agent who has been causing problems for the agency for years. She quickly finds herself in a labyrinth of deceptions and partnerships she cannot trust, where her enemies at time can seem more forthright and civil than her allies.

Theron is amazing in the role, filled with steely determination, confidence, composure, shifting between glamour and gritty physicality, and sometimes both (after one fight Broughton proclaims "If I knew, I would have worn a different outfit".  She commits to the role's intense physicality and carries the cumulative weight of each fight with her in following scenes.  The necessity to do anything for queen and country lands her in an intimate affair with a French agent (Sofia Boutella) that starts off as just business but, in spite of herself, is actually something more.

The narrative is problematic however.  The film utilizes a framing sequence, with Broughton debriefing her MI6 superior (Toby Jones) and a visiting CIA agent (John Goodman) about the mission. The film is interrupted frequently by this framing sequence, robbing it of much of the climbing tension. The tone of these framing sequences is largely expository, helping to provide context to the events as they're happening, but it's superfluous.  As well, this robs the film of any mortal danger Broughton is in, knowing that she survives the mission.  The story is a dense and winding one, difficult to follow with a plethora of thinly developed and sporadically seen characters, but that can be said of many a Bond picture as well.

There's a lot of style to Atomic Blond, director David Leitch utilizing the neon-lit shadows of John Wick (which he co-directed) to give a real visual pop, why composing scenes around Berlin using its art deco as the backdrop for many visual feasts.  Likewise the wardrobes of the film define the characters so well, particularly giving Broughton, as centerpiece, standout looks that work so well with both the neon and deco.

The film's biggest detraction is its overwhelmingly, almost omnipresent 80's soundtrack.  So rarely is the soundtrack ambient in the scene, it's just blaring, familiar 80's jams laid over top of the scene.  When the third act begins with an intensely long and winding sequence where Broughton tries to help a defecting agent escape the city and it devolves into a brutal fight for survival and transforms into a car chase, there's a merciful absence of soundtrack.  It lets the physicality shine without interference.   The brutality of the fight and how it wears the combatants down is inspired, Leitch's action choreography experience shining once again.  It's the highlight of the film and well worth spending time in this world getting there.

Word is there is sequel plans, given that Theron is producer and pushed to get the film made (in order to have an action vehicle for her to star in) it's a welcome franchise.  There's also the possibility of connecting the franchise with John Wick which would be a little unusual give that Wick is modern day and Broughton is 30 years behind him.

Where Atomic Blonde is clearly focused on turning Lorraine Broughton into an cinematic action hero in the Bond vein, Red Sparrow seems to want its protagonist, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), to be more of a spy in the Le Carre model, less action and more intrigue.

Though set in modern day, Red Sparrow feels very deeply like a cold war hold out.  Cel phones are now part of the set, but there's very little else that would differentiate this from a story set in the 1960's, '70's or '80's. Red Sparrow could also be mistaken as a reimagining of the Black Widow story, as Dominika is a ballet dancer who's conscripted into service and trained to use her body as a weapon in a secret Russian spy training school. (Rather than coincidence or copying, it's more likely share their origins in stories of Russian kompromat training schools).

Red Sparrow takes a very unfavorable look at Russian society, effectively damning it as a prison state, where everyone is under the thumb of the ruling elite, where you only have value if you can serve the mother country, otherwise you're just waste.  After an accident ends Dominika's career as a ballerina, her uncle, the head of the SVR, asks for her service in entraping a prominent Russian businessman. She agrees only to be traumatized by being raped and witness to his garroting in short order.  Her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), needing her discretion, gives her a choice of execution or a future as an SVR agent, a Red Sparrow, trained in the art of seduction for the purposes of extracting intelligence or gaining leverage by compromising their target.

Dominika submits to the humiliation of the training, ecercises designed to force out any sense of self, sense of modesty, or sense of pride.  The goal is to be a tool, a weapon, a body to be exploited in service of mother Russia. Yet she never loses sight of what is really at play, power and control.  She sees the power others strive for, and the control they seek to have (over her and anything or anyone else) and she sees the strings to pull to manipulate that.  The powers that be think it's her training, but it's self-preservation and a big middle finger to everything she's been tought.

She's sent out on a mission to Budapest, to seduce Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), an American agent who has connections to a mole within Russian intelligence.  She's to find out who the mole is.  Along the way she has altercations with her roommate and the Russian station agent in the city.  As she engages with these sources (as well as her uncle and his handlers - Ciaran Hinds and Jeremy Irons) the film plays with the audience's perception of Dominika.  Is she in over her head?  Is she in complete control?  Is she deceiving Nash when she seduces him, or is she actually vulnerable (and is he really falling for it or does he understand the deception?)? When Nash recruits her as a double agent, and she agrees, is this part of the ploy or is it in earnest?  Is she a patriot or a traitor?  Can she be both?

Unlike Atomic Blonde, the intrigue of Red Sparrow is far more personal and intimate, thus much easier to follow, if end result is only clear at the end.  Spy games are just that, games, which play with lives, careers, politics, and balances of power, and there are good players and bad in these games (both in terms of intent and skill).  Dominika, by the end, proves she is a good player but concerned only with her own outcome.

Like Theron, Lawrence gives plenty to the role, a lot of physicality and nudity was requested of them, yet where Theron's sexuality culminated in a steamy same-sex sex scene, Lawrence's portrayal of sexuality is terse, absent and cold, like the training provided to her character intones.  There's an unpleasantness to sexuality, as one would expect when it's used as a weapon.

Likewise with both characters, I find the accents shaky.  Theron's British accent sounds put upon at times, while Lawrence's Russian brogue never rings true (it drops out entirely at times).  In a more action-oriented setting a loose accent is more forgivable, but with such a heavy character piece like Red Sparrow I question the need for accents at all.  They're in Russia, they should be speaking Russian.  If they're not speaking Russian, why bother with accents (it gives the impression they're speaking in English instead of Russian, which would be weird).  See The Death Of Stalin, another Russian-set film, but all the performers speak with their native affectations.

Red Sparrow is good, but not great.  It's a tad overlong at 2h14m but it's always engaging.  It's deeply unpleasant at times, the horrors of violence and violent actions are not shied away from, making for uncomfortable viewing.  Matthews has follow-up novels featuring Dominika which, given the film's modest success, may actually wind up with another franchise for Lawrence to play in.  As with Lorraine Broughton, there's definitely room for more stories with these characters.  I was more visually engaged (and impressed) with Atomic Blonde but more emotionally engaged with Red Sparrow.  Neither needs to compete, as there's more than enough space in cinema for multiple badass female spies (afterall, nobody ever complained about how many male-led spy movies there were).