Spy movies. They’re all different, yet all the same, because that’s how most of the audience wants it. “The 355” (2022) goes out on a limb simply by having all the main spies be women. Subtract the eye candy, however, and there remains a boilerplate, globetrotting espionage flick. Bad guys steal a superweapon. But who exactly are the bad guys? Our protagonists form a rainbow coalition to save themselves – and also the world (of course). Jessica Chastain does Jessica Chastain things. Nobody runs out of bullets – or hits anything – except when they absolutely need to. Eye candy is comfort food.
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I hadn’t seen a good Cold War spy thriller in a while, so I was interested in viewing “The Courier” (2021). It trundles pithily down a familiar, based-on-a-true-story path, with little, tiny spy cameras and Benedict Cumberbatch as a salesman recruited to serve as the West’s go-between to a Soviet colonel concerned about Khrushchev. Then comes the Cuban Missile Crisis and things take a dark turn, with KGB agents, dark prison cells, and Cumberbatch looking wan on the Capital A Acting diet. It’s not bad, just jarring. Spoiler alert: We all didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust 60 years ago.
The thing about spy movies is that the willing suspension of disbelief is often abused (She’s a double-agent! No, wait! A triple-agent! In a double cross! No, wait! A triple cross!). The thing about movies based on a comic book is that they’re more worried about setting up a franchise than telling a cohesive story. The confluence of these two dilemmas is “Atomic Blonde” (2017), a delicious piece of eye candy that turns out to be empty cinematic calories. Not that it isn’t interesting. It’s like a Charlize Theron action-hero highlight reel. But it’s not a real movie. Too bad.
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