Charlize Theron’s “Atomic Blonde” opens this weekend, and so far it’s garnered mostly positive reviews from critics. The secret agent thriller finds Theron as Agent Lorraine Broughton, one of the top spies in the British MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service), who’s dispatched to Berlin to take down a ring of bad-guy spies.
In the era of big-budget superhero action movies, extended universes and long-running, expansive franchises, heading to the movies always brings one major question with it: Whether you should sit through the credits.
For many, when the credits roll, it’s time to sprint for the bathroom, but all those expanded cinematic universes and franchises love to drop mid-credits and post-credits tag scenes on their movies that tease the next installment in the series. So does “Atomic Blonde” have a post-credits scene?
The answer is no: You’re free to head to the bathroom or the parking lot as soon as the last bullet is fired in “Atomic Blonde.”
Theron has led action movies before, but it was her turn in “Mad Max: Fury Road” that really seems to have sold her action star chops. “Atomic Blonde” takes Theron back to 1989, where the dwindling Cold War is still the stage for a whole lot of seriously deadly spy games. She teams up with another British agent, David Percival (James McAvoy), who’s more of a loose cannon than reliable backup.
TheWrap’s review says the movie often enters “action movie nirvana” when it breaks into its over-the-top, well-choreographed action set pieces — although its script leaves some things to be desired.
Still, critics seem to agree there’s a lot to like in “Atomic Blonde,” and that it might have the ability to launch a Theron-led super-spy franchise.
That’d be notable from a number of standpoints, not the least of which is that Hollywood is a bit thin on women-led action movie franchises. We might still be waiting for another chance to see Theron play the role of Furiosa from “Mad Max,” but in the meantime, Theron as a Bond-like spy sounds like it’ll do just fine.