• Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Hair
• Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Hair
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• Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Sunglasses

Reporter turns stuntman in Atomic Blonde stunt training

Atomic Blonde wouldn’t be half as kickass if it weren’t for the powerhouse that is Charlize Theron. Single-handedly, the 42-year-old kicks, crushes and crusades her way through fight scene. Without Charlize Theron, the spy adventure 'Atomic Blonde' would only be clever.She makes it insightful. The actress gives emotional depth to the highly mannered behavior of the film’s heroine, British spy Lorraine Broughton, as she tries retrieve a coveted list of undercover operatives and catch a British double agent working in West Germany.

News.com.au US correspondent James Law prepares to take on the stuntmen from Atomic Blonde.Source:Supplied

IT’S not often that I turn up to work in my trackie-daks. But I’ve been told to wear “loose, comfortable clothing” for today’s assignment and, once I cop a look at the burly men I will be going toe-to-toe with, I am not going to argue.

I have been sent to the 87Eleven gym, found in a nondescript warehouse in Los Angeles, where I’ve been convinced that I will be turned into an action star after only an hour’s practice.

I am a less-than-coordinated man, so I’m less than convinced anyone would believe that it’s me beating up these four musclebound men.

87Eleven Action Design is described as a “one-stop school for action movie stars”. Its team members have acted as stunt doubles for Brad Pitt in Fight Club and Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games movies, and helped revive Keanu Reeves’ career by turning him into a fighting machine for John Wick.

Charlize Theron kicks butt as a lethal MI6 assassin in Atomic Blonde.Source:Supplied

Most recently, they worked intensively with Charlize Theron for her kick-arse spy thriller Atomic Blonde, which is out today on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD and on demand.

The South African beauty spent three hours in the gym each day for nearly two months to hone the moves she would need to transform into a deadly secret agent for the movie.

While the weight benches and boxing gloves imply that I’m in an everyday gym, the fake handguns and prosthetic severed arms prove I’m somewhere entirely different.

After meeting the stunt team, I am invited onto the gym’s sprung floor to learn a routine that seems impossible to pull off. First, shoot two men dead. Second, kick another aggressor in the crotch. Third, throw him to the ground. Fourth, cop a headbutt from another goon before smashing him in the shin with a crate.

Oh, and the piece de resistance? Knock out the last man standing by smashing a glass bottle over his head, then walk away unscathed. No problem.

News.com.au’s James Law tries to hide the fact that he’s packing it as he prepares to take on a horde of stuntmen.Source:Supplied

But as the stunt team walk me through each stage of the action, the sequence starts to make sense.

And as I rehearse each move, the secrets behind movie stunts are slowly revealed.

The kick in the crotch? If you aim for the inner thigh and the recipient sells it as being excruciatingly painful, the audience will think you’ve struck him right where it hurts.

Averting a left hook.Source:Supplied

A smash across the face with a crate? Well, if the camera is watching at the right angle and the stuntman groans loud enough, the audience will assume you’ve made contact with his jaw.

Getting thrown over another guy’s shoulder? While the throw is fast, a good stuntman will actually place his colleague onto the mat with all the grace of a ballroom dancer.

What lifts these sequences from choreography to a bruising melee are the stuntmen themselves.

Uh oh. Here comes a headbutt.Source:Supplied

While they often act as Hollywood stars’ doubles, these stuntmen are stellar actors in their own right, using their body movements and well-timed grunts and groans to make the scenes real.

And don’t be fooled into thinking what they do is all sleight of hand. One stuntman drilled me until I gave him a forceful kick in the inner thigh — no higher — and another wouldn’t let us shoot the scene until he was convinced I would smash a glass bottle over his head with force.

Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Hair

(The glass bottle, as it turns out, is made of sugar. It’s so fragile that it will smash to smithereens in your hand if you don’t hold it right.)

James Law prepares to do some damage with a glass bottle.Source:Supplied

Atomic Blonde is jam-packed with ambitious fight scenes, which the 87Eleven team designed. One of the most memorable is the brutal seven-minute stairwell sequence where Theron vanquishes foe after foe in what looks to the audience like one long take.

“She worked extremely hard,” the movie’s stunt co-ordinator Sam Hargraves told news.com.au of the Oscar winner.

Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Hair

Charlize Theron worked hard to appear in all the fight scenes.Source:Supplied

“Maybe Keanu [Reeves], but not a lot of actors in the business train as hard as she did for this role and that was what allowed a lot of this action to live and breathe the way it did and it allowed Dave to shoot it how he wanted to, which is extended takes and you could hang on the actor doing it.

“You didn’t have to cut away to a double or go in tight or use editing techniques to hide her inadequacies. You could just let it live and she made it not just live but come alive in a very exciting way — but that was because of the training she put in in the gym.

“There’s times where you have to use a stunt double, but she wanted to do everything.

“She was fully committed to that character and it shows in the movie. She just sells it, 100 per cent.”

Atomic Blonde's Stunt co-ordinator Sam Hargrave's speaks with James Law

And, so came the time for me to follow in Charlize’s footsteps.

After a final rehearsal, Hargraves himself got behind the camera to shoot my final fight scene.

When he yelled “action”, I sprung into action, picking off two men with my Glock, swerving away from a left hook, throwing a man to the ground and getting smashed up against some cardboard boxes. And there’s little more satisfying in this world then smashing a glass bottle over another man’s skull.

Charlize Theron Atomic Blondeback Muscles

He had it coming.Source:Supplied

And here’s the proof that these experts can turn anyone into a stuntman. When the shoot was over, I was begging to go again.

Atomic Blonde is out on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD and on demand today.

Don’t mess with the Atomic Blonde.Source:Supplied

Theron's commanding performance is remarkable. Her take-no-bull body language and calculating stare give her character an intelligence and prove she's the right person for the job. Theron grounds the film whenever it threatens to become a smarter-than-thou, hyper-convoluted slog. She also makes you believe that her character isn't just another James Bond clone. You may watch 'Atomic Blonde' because it's from the co-director of 'John Wick,' but you should see it for Theron.

Theron also makes you want to dig into the meaning of a film whose amped-up '80s soundtrack—everything from Nena's '99 Luftaballons' to New Order's 'Blue Monday”—announces “Atomic Blonde” as a knowing act of role-playing. The story is set during the first week of November, 1989, days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Historically speaking, we know how the story ends. But what’s important here is the spy work and its consequences for Lorraine. To get the job done, she has to enter every situation numb to the human connections she makes in order to (primarily) survive and also to save the lives of her colleagues. She consequently addresses every situation tactically rather than emotionally.

Lorraine has personal ties to the spy whose death and betrayal leads to her arrival in Berlin, even if those ties are thankfully only mentioned once during a flashback. That dream/flashback suggests a personal dimension to Lorraine's quest that is thankfully never foregrounded. Lorraine's status quo is chilliness, a foundational state of being whose necessity is confirmed with almost every interaction. As a woman, she has to be on guard at all times, because she enters every situation knowing that everyone wants to proposition and/or take advantage of her. At every step, she meets people who openly deceive her or who are theoretically on her side but seem as if they’re out to get her. First she is ambushed by a group of Stasi officers who pose as her contacts. Then she meets British spy David Percival (James McAvoy), who is disillusioned with his low status on the espionage totem pole and doesn’t seem too invested in helping a British informant known as Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) to flee Berlin. A French spy and potential love interest named Delphine (Sofia Boutella) challenges Lorraine, but even she is initially untrustworthy since she employs the same used car salesman 'trust me' tactics as Lorraine's counterparts (the first time they meet, Delphine offers to 'rescue' Lorraine).

Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde Sunglasses

Still, the fact that Lorraine's backstory is relegated to a single dream sequence is telling. True, her story is recounted in the form of a series of flashbacks to a trio of antagonistic interrogators: Eric Gray (Toby Jones), Lorraine's commanding officer; Emmet Kurzfeld (John Goodman), a dickish CIA chief; and the mysterious Chief 'C' (James Faulkner), an MI6 figurehead who watches Lorraine tell her tale from behind a two-way mirror. But these guys are, as she points out, not her 'superiors.' For the most part, action and steely-eyed glares tell us everything we need to know about who Lorraine is. The fact that the film's creators trust viewers enough enough to downplay hackneyed origin-story psychology will hopefully make viewers more inclined to forgive blocky expository dialogue exchanges, smart-ass Machiavelli quotations, and an overwritten plot.