Atomic? Wait.

I think of Charlize Theron primarily as a dramatic actress. But the truth is she's an incredibly versatile star who has appeared in comedies and action movies just as often as "serious" material. A recent example was 2017's Atomic Blonde.

Set in Berlin at the fall of the Wall in 1989, Atomic Blonde is the story of a spy sent to retrieve a list of double agents about to be exposed. It's kinda-sorta James Bond meets Jason Bourne, by way of John Wick. But of course, those progenitors I named are all male-dominated franchises. In centering on a woman, Atomic Blonde is simultaneously none of those things even as it's very much all of those things.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that Atomic Blonde really uses the best parts of the things it's borrowing from. Like John Wick, this movie wants the action to be the major draw. It's an odd blend of over-the-top antics and gritty realism, and the plot really doesn't matter except in how it gets you from one action scene to the next. But, unlike John Wick, Atomic Blonde has a lot of plot. Like, way too much. There are too many characters, too many double-crosses, too many questions about just what is going on. The story isn't getting out of the way for the action as much as it should.

Like a classic James Bond movie, Atomic Blonde wants to spin an elaborate web of governments working against each other -- schemes on top of machinations on top of conspiracies. But in setting the action at the fall of the Berlin Wall -- essentially, at the close of the Cold War -- it feels like none of what we're watching really matters. The entire game, at least these rules for it, is about to change. Yet the plot of this movie really isn't about that change, it's about a bunch of people playing the game the way they always have.

Like a Jason Bourne movie... well, this may be the lift that Atomic Blonde gets most right. In Charlize Theron, this movie has found a star who can deliver both the dramatic goods and the powerful punches. The main character of Lorraine Broughton is not personality-free like John Wick, nor too suave to be totally credible in a fight like James Bond. That's the needle Jason Bourne threaded. But the action of the Bourne movies is often filmed haphazardly and edited frenetically -- in part to generate a mood, but also (one suspects) because Damon needed help to look badass. Not Theron. She's a better action star than Matt Damon... and frankly, most men you could name. The action of Atomic Blonde is staged methodically and with a mostly stable camera, so you can appreciate just how much of this she does herself.

One scene in the middle of the movie really showcases this. It's the scene that almost every critic talked about, and it's easy to see why. There's a crazy 10-minute action sequence that is presented with the illusion of being a single, unbroken camera take. Even knowing that it is an illusion doesn't make it feel less impressive. Big summer action movies never look like this. And I mean never. When you get a 2- or 3-minute action scene without cuts, people talk about that. (Daredevil, Children of Men, Oldboy, others.) This sequence is twice as long and more, and sustains itself for the entire duration.

It's also, unfortunately, the only sustained chunk of the movie that I would say is actually good. The rest of the movie leaves you wondering why John Goodman took such a limited role, or laughing at James McAvoy's wild performance. If the rest of the movie had been even half as good as the prolonged action sequence, it might have rocketed to the top of my favorites list. But as it stands, you really can watch just this sequence, not really needing to know anything to enjoy what's best about the movie.

I'm not sure how you grade an awesome 10-minute short film buried inside an unengaging larger package. But for how good that 10 minutes is, and how good Charlize Theron is, I think I'll maybe call it a C+. Atomic Blonde is, more than anything, a movie of wasted potential.