Atomic Blonde

David Leitch’s 2017 film follows Lorraine Broughton, sent into Berlin just before the wall falls. Leitch came from stunt work: he doubled Brad Pitt five times and Van Damme twice, and co-directed the first John Wick uncredited. The source is The Coldest City, a black and white graphic novel by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. Its Lorraine arrives with her cover intact; the film has her blown in the first minutes and jumped in a car park. Pierre, a male contact in the book, becomes a woman named Delphine, which is where the affair comes from. The endings differ: in the book someone else shoots Percival; here Lorraine does. Charlize Theron trained with eight coaches, cracked her teeth from clenching her jaw, needed surgery, and bruised a rib. Her preparation overlapped with Keanu Reeves on the second John Wick, and they sparred. The stairwell fight is not one shot: pieces up to two minutes long were joined with pans and bodies crossing the lens, and shot in story order, so exhaustion and damage accumulate. A good fit if you want to watch the stairwell fight visibly wear Lorraine down as it runs. Not for you if you need the list plot tied off, since the account comes from Lorraine in a debriefing room and is deliberately unreliable.