It took Scarlett Johansson seven appearances in other MCU films before her titular character received her own standalone film – through no fault of her own – and while we should applaud it because it’s a well-acted and well-produced film, know that it also doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the library.

REVIEW: 'Wasp Network’ is an overstuffed, plodding spy drama

Despite a starry cast and a ripped-from-the-headlines story - which is only now receiving its first big-budget adaptation - the movie never coheres into anything beyond a string of loose sequences. Some of these beats work on their own, but Wasp Network never escapes the feeling that it’s missing huge chunks of material, or choking its main performances.

[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: No real feeling to 'Saturday Fiction'

Exposition is generally frowned upon, but in a film featuring double agents, double crosses and a multitude of characters and languages, it lacks a scene that explains everything to the viewer. Perhaps we've been dumbed down by clear struggles between good vs. bad in the superhero genre, but Lou Ye's black-and-white film noir fails to really tie a neat ribbon around its convoluted plot and too-mysterious femme fatale

FilmJason ChenSeptember 18, 2019chinese, shanghai, gong li, li gong, lou ye, spy, espionage, film, movies, review, tiff, 2019Comment

REVIEW: The jaw-dropping 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout'

The film is very aware the story is not its strong suit; the entire plot is explained in the first 10 minutes in classic Mission: Impossible secret message fashion, and then promptly ushers you into an incredible two-hour escape. What’s most impressive is that it feels like there’s a legitimate mental and physical weight to the things Cruise is put through and that’s undeniably a part of his charm.

REVIEW: 'Sicario: Day of the Soldado' misses the mark

There seems to be two distinct films in here; there’s a black ops espionage thriller pitting the talkers in suits versus the doers in camo, and another which weaves a slow burn tale of a hitman who is forced to decide between the mission or the moral high road.

REVIEW: ‘Atomic Blonde’ is a neon-lit thermonuclear warhead, with a few frayed wires

A finely engineered watch figures prominently in the plot of Atomic Blonde. It’s loaded with some secret information that everyone in the movie wants to get their hands on. It’s tracked by operatives of MI6, the CIA, the KGB and the French DGSE. Whoever has the watch controls the fates of dozens, if not hundreds of spies in Cold War Europe. As the people of East and West Berlin take the final crucial steps towards reunification, a shadowy battle plays out over a single deadly timepiece.

Like the watch, the film is a collection of beautiful components. The craftsmanship behind every part is on full display: bold, fluorescent cinematography, calibrated performances, and a vicious one-take action scene for the ages. There’s an important flaw, though: Atomic Blonde puts all of this powerful material on display, but can’t seem to put it together correctly. It’s as though the pieces are grinding against each other, resetting the clock when the film should be ticking forward and building tension.