Oscar winning women kicking ass go...
Halle Berry is pretty much the whole show in Kidnap, a movie in which her best(?) efforts cant quite move the needle of such a simple and clumsy film from 'trashy' to 'good'. Better direction would have helped immesely, but as dirt-stupid thrillers go, you could do a lot worse. Its engaging on a lizard brain level, its chock full of action (good decisions and dialog, not so much), and by the end Berry has racked up a considerable wake of destruction. I would have liked it more if it were just a little dumber, or.better made, but I did like it to some extent. Bad movie podcasts are gonna have a field day with this one.
So Kidnap show the perils of too little ambition, Atomic Blonde has a bit too little. It invests far too much time in its increasingly labrythine plotting (I think one character ended up a quadruple agent) thats not nearly engaging enough to earn it all the attention it gets. But that's really my only complaint I've got about this film, which is pulling hard be the coolest, most stylish,hardest hitting spy thriller/action movie of the year. Sometimes it even suceeds at it. The action scenes are frigging great, amd the neon-lit atmosphere and period appropriete soundtrack the film luxeriates in is fun as well. Stupid John LeCarre with throatpunches, that'll do nicely.
