Emma Stone has come a long way from her La La Land character Mia’s humble barista origins: she’s now the highest-paid actress of this year, thanks mostly to last year’s Damien Chazelle film that rocketed her around the awards circuit last winter.
Atomic Blonde is an easy sell: It’s Charlize Theron in a stylish spy thriller from one-half of the directing duo behind John Wick. But the first solo directorial effort from David Leitch is a little more James Bond than Blonde Wick — James Blonde, maybe, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s certainly more plot-driven (and at times, slightly convoluted) than John Wick, but no less enjoyable, and though the action scenes are every bit as awesome as you’d hope, it’s not quite the film you might be expecting.
In Summer of 2015 we entered the era of Charlize Theron, Badass Action Star, and that was only the beginning. Following her Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron is on her way to becoming the ruthless action hero the movies need with her villain in the upcoming The Fate of the Furious and now Atomic Blonde.
George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ may have been about Tom Hardy’s titular road warrior, but there’s no denying Charlize Theron’s one-armed Furiosa was the real star. According to a rumor, that one-armed heroine might be getting her own movie sooner than expected.