Spies in Berlin

The man who came out from the coldⁱ is a terrible misery of a "spy" film. Atomic blondeⁱⁱ is an infinitely better remake thereof (the alcoholism gives it away, if nothing else), but even so it doesn't amount to much.

Charlize Theron is maturing nicely (she even gets lead production credit, fancy that wonder for a 42yo ex-blondy!), and the writing is no longer the cringy atrocity of yesteryear, but strictly because it is formalized atrocity, the post-Ritchie "British action"ⁱⁱⁱ, which, as I'll perhaps grow tired of saying before we're done, isn't all that much better. Atomic blonde also isn't nearly as bad as Aeon Flux, chiefly because she has the common fucking sense to go naked when she's supposed to be naked, now that nobody gives a shit anymore. Youth is wasted on the young, and especially so on the young chicklets. Stop listening to old women, yo! Go out, today! Sixteen is very old enough!

Those considerations aside, the notion that her diminutive fistlets and birdy bones pack enough punch to even register against a male, let alone knock anyone out, is so cute it certainly crosses disbelief^iv into memetic territory. What, Jerry could never hold up a pan heavy enough for Tom to flatten his face against ?! Lies! We've seen it! That's exactly how it happened : a two ounce mouse held up a twenty pound cast iron skillet so that a two pound cat flattened its head against it. Tru fax! And besides, she wore the turtleneck up, that's tantamount to invoking superpowers as any borderline sleeve^v out there can privately confirm (if you ever manage to get her naked).

Anyway. I wouldn't go so far as to say this sort of crap is worth watching. If you're particularily interested in the workings of the broken minds of irrecoverably useless females, I suppose watching this beats field work in that it shuts up when you pause it. That'd be about all.

1. 1965, by Martin Ritt, with Richard Burton [↩]
2. 2017, by David Leitch, with Charlize Theron. [↩]
3. The same slickstream that created a Segall-esque career for Jason Statham. That whole pile of formally-similar, entirely forgotten productions trying to follow up Snatch & all is very much a franchise, like Need For Speed, or Miss America. To quote a similarly-involved butthead,

   500. That's the number of pointless films with the deep camera zooms and the 180 degree camera horizon rotations and log time warps you have to make before you're a real diesel.

   They're trying, though one would pray to Isis they don't actually manage to make 500 of the damned things. [↩]

4. The master had a much better representation of this, with the relatively bulkier Arquette on the set. [↩]
5. There's a lot of scared-and-alone 20something chick service packed in, including a "car key fighting" scene. I have no idea why chickies imagine holding a key so it pokes out in between index and ring finger improves the combat posture of a 50 kg pile of nothing, but let's run through the facts just in case :
   • Any male can lift and throw 50 kgs. If you weigh 50kgs, this means you. We're not discussing "trained" "combat experts" bla bla here. I can fucking lift and throw 50 kgs, and I've never bothered with a gym in my life. If you weigh in as a welterweight or under, your entire hand to hand combat strategy consists of protecting your neck while looking for an escape route even as a male. Yes you might pick up a parry stick on your way out. Guess why it's called that.
   • If you were born female, you are entirely useless in hand to hand combat. I don't care what films you watched, that's not how it works. Your muscles are liquid shit, made by mother nature out of spite, so you get fucked. They serve no other purpose than that, and deliberately, and insistently so. And there is nothing you can do about this, it's not whether "you identify as female". Your cells, each and every one of them, has an XX stamped into their very essential core, and this means that your muscles will suck no matter what you do. No. Matter. What. You. Do. Yes, it's great to keep in shape, you'll make a much better fuck toy. That is all it will do for you.
   • The point of a brass knuckle is that it improves the weight of the punching fist. My fist, without the wrist assemblage or the solid steel ulna and radius driving it, weighs in over a pound (and male fists weigh 30% more than female fists just as a bonus fuck you nature threw in there). If I punch while holding a one pound brass knuckle, I not only deliver almost twice the impact, but, importantly, I deliver enough impact to go from well-under-knockout to well-over-knockout. That's the important point there, the body is built with some tolerances, and those tolerances are built on... the body itself, and so adding leverage improves the results disproportionately by crossing domain separators. Leaving aside that the anemic arms of a female couldn't even fucking lift a brass knuckle, let alone accelerate it at a reasonable speed (W = mass * speed² ; whereas air friction = k speed⁴, and so there is an optimal speed you must reach), adding a pound to your negligible four ounces isn't gonna cross the domain, so it won't matter anyway. Did I mention your car keys don't weigh a pound ? If you absolutely must, use a roll of quarters not fucking quarter gram car keys for christ's sake.
   • Hand to hand combat is decided by choking, not by striking. Your enemy is going to walk up to you through the barage of little girl slaps, turn you around so fast you'll nearly pass out, prop your neck in the crook of his elbow and push you into the darkness. It'll all take less than fifteen seconds, and don't tell me bullcrap about how "you trained in self defense with a self-defense training trainer". I had one in my livingroom, she was naked, we engaged in an amicable bout and she was ready and willing to pass out within the regular quarter minute. Your "trainer" is no better -- she was naked in some dude's livingroom playing the part of wax in his arms too. It's what it is, whatever you might've been told.

   Now back to your regularly scheduled Netflix combat heroine programming, I guess. As for us, back to the original topic -- the spy film is fundamentally interesting to the bordersleeve crowd because for some reason the "spy" canon has created this "keep quiet and look, don't get involved" sort of personality, which is exactly how the psychology she-student went through college.

   Some of the best spies in the real world are very open, puppydog behaved sluts, who'll go with everyone for the asking. It works remarkably well, in practice, but of course not so well in theory which is why the soubrette tells mistress "I didn't think you'd show up". It has to be built up, see, blondy isn't one of those, she doesn't go with just anyone, she doesn't in fact go at all. She's a spy, see! This makes sense. And yes the terminology is correct, of fucking course this is an ancient "rom com" from back when it was called "mistaken identity comedy", with a mistress and a younger, eager, brunette slut and the absent / confused / senescent master and so on and so forth. Oh, you thought it was a spy film because it bloody well said so ?! Jesus. What other lulz is there in your head, "no means no" perhaps ? The santa bunny ? Grow up. [↩]