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****
Dir: David Leitch (15. 115 mins)
Charlize Theron goes John Wick in this hyper-stylised action thriller with plenty of bruising bangs and crunches amidst a lightweight plot. Theron plays cut glass accented MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, sent to Berlin days before the wall is about to come down in 1989. A British agent has been killed and she’s sent to investigate, joining forces with James McAvoy’s lunatic Berlin bureau chief. There’s a bid for Le Carré-esque complexity as Theron is interrogated between bouts of high octane 80s neon soaked violence, but they are obstacles to the mayhem meat of Theron’s action superstardom. There may be murky agency subplots and exposition aplenty but this is, like John Wick, an action B movie writ large with one of Wick’s co-directors at the helm. Like Keanu’s shooty/fighty extravaganza, this works best when it captures Theron’s physicality in motion. Theron is a classier actor than Reeves and manages to add weight and considerable charisma to her fisticuffs, with an eighties soundtrack playing as she dispatches goons with ruthless and inventive single take ferocity courtesy of Leitch’s kinetic direction. John Goodman crops up as a CIA handler, Sofia Boutella provides a lesbian love interest and Eddie Marsan ducks bullets with Theron, who following Mad Max: Fury Road and Fast and Furious 8 is now a mainstream female action icon.
Opens Aug 9