Charlize Theron in
Investigation & Punishment:

Bombshell is a dramatized account of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes’ institutional practice of and termination for sexual harassment, following three women as they confront the company’s fascistic work culture of violent misogyny (while also avoiding acknowledgment of the responsibility they hold for upholding said fascism via Republicanism). The film opens with news anchor Megyn Kelly (Theron) facing a conservative media news storm following her confrontation with Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential debate over his misogynistic comments. Meanwhile, Gretchen Carlson- co-anchor of Fox and Friends- is fired from the network after refusing Ailes’ sexual advances and supporting an assault weapons ban, prompting her to file her long-contemplated sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes. Her lawsuit prompts other women at Fox to come forward; one of these women is Kayla Pospisil, a fictional character who represents the experiences of several real women who spoke out against Ailes (and Bill and Jack). After debating whether or not to, she eventually goes public with her story, along with Kelly who had also been silent, leading to Ailes' termination. Atomic Blonde is an action spy-thriller set in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, following MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) as she attempts to recover a list (wristwatch) of undercover agents and uncover a double agent (Satchel). The task requires her to stay in Berlin where she reluctantly collaborates with another double-crossing agent, David Percival, and a French operative (and temporary lover), Delphine LaSalle. Complications at work and in the bedroom- and the indistinction of the two places- catch up to Broughton as the plot advances, but her cunning outpaces the consequences in the end (or the plot twists erase them). 

While Charlize Theron’s talent has always been critically acknowledged- having received an Academy Award for best actress for Monster in 2003- she had been extremely underutilized until the 2010s. The films being reviewed here- despite mixed reviews and plot incongruencies- are among the recent crop of both commercially and/or critically successful films of hers that have allowed her mainstay in the mainstream or the Academy. There is a pattern with these Theron-led films that are able to stay afloat- these two, Mad Max: Fury Road, Tully, and The Old Guard- in that Theron is allowed to express her greatest prowess as an actress: “She can come across as remote, but she also reads as supremely self-contained: She’s a fortress of one. She shows you her characters’ existential isolation, which is often where their humanity lies.” (New York Times) This existential isolation- hiding the real Charlize- means she also presents a perfect figure for the “dangerously beautiful woman” with a “mysterious allure” at the center of the “investigation and punishment” paradigm used against women in American film as explained by Benshoff & Griffin. Thus instead of critiquing the legitimacy of the supposed feminist politics in each movie as a lot of reviews do, I will discuss their subversion of the I&P paradigm.

Firstly, Bombshell explodes the fourth wall barrier, preventing Benshoff and Griffin’s full analysis and real-world application of this cinematic paradigm of the male gaze: its analogous (or derivative) relation to “rape culture” as a fundamental facet of patriarchy. Dramatizing real-life events (especially to the point of adding fictional characters who feature as the main cast) could of course present complications in crossdisciplinary analysis between film and feminist sociology, but the relation is undeniable; the primary conflict between the primary protagonist and antagonist- Ailes’ rape of Kelly- and the latter’s internal conflict- deciding whether or not to expose him- reflects the female character’s conflict whether to subvert the paradigm. Furthermore, Roach displays the inability of the male gaze to accurately address misogyny (rape) in film without reifying it, by allowing a cinematic (climactic) buildup to both the verbal and visual exposure of Kelly’s sexual assault. The visual representation of any of the harassment was unnecessary, and this is held true by Kelly’s verbal explanation of her assault sustaining both the audience and her team’s understanding of her internal conflict without any visual cues. Yet Roach still found it necessary to include both her assault and the harassment Pospisil faced on-screen, exposing the insidious permeation of the male gaze and its relation to rape. Not only was Ailes investigating and punishing Kelly in the flashback with Paul Weiss, but the audience has also been investigating these “allegations” and this “story.” The male gaze is constructively used throughout this entire movie to break down Theron’s tough exterior, culminating in the flashback rape scene- as well as Robbie’s hysterical yet fictional phone call when she thoroughly details the assault to McKinnon and decides to sue Roger- that leads to climactic catharsis. We know that Ailes committed sexual assault (there is no “mysterious allure” here nor is there one behind Kelly’s conspicuous silence once she reveals her assault in real life and on-screen), so why is there the visual undressing of events? The question raised from the film’s onset- how could she endure this toxic grab-ass environment, and moreover, be silent amidst Ailes’ sexual assault allegations, if even her own people considered her a feminist- is answered by the rape. Thus, the filmic representation of the event (the rape) through the male gaze cannot escape reification through its cinematic analog (the investigation and punishment paradigm).

If Bombshell exposes the inability of the male gaze to redress misogyny by always placing the woman at the center of investigation for both the characters and the audience, Atomic Blonde reveals temporary relief from this matrix by both subjecting all characters to the possibility of I&P and also allowing all of them to be the investigators and punishers. LaSalle actually proves this better than Broughton, as she is caught in the middle of an extensive web of I&P relations. As a photographer-spy her gaze in Berlin is ever-present, but she does not realize that she is being watched by Percival, Broughton, and MI6. Analyzing her death, or at least those who had the power to take it, exposes the hierarchies of power in the film. Percival killed her not because she was investigating him (which he assumedly did not know) but because she explicitly demands he ends his investigation or be punished. A woman threatening a man while she is holding a gun in her hand threatens the established power dynamics, and Percival has to check her by killing her. Simply killing her with an ice pick like he did Bakhtin would prove too easy (or any of the contexts in which the other men were killed), so he chokes her from behind with a wire while she is wearing lacy lingerie. One rung on the hierarchy is gone. Percival is soon hunted down and shot twice by Broughton, and she affirms that the killing is not just for him setting her up but also because he killed Delphine. She already knew that Percival set the both of them up, and she also warned LaSalle that “this [business] only ends one way,” but she still was distraught over the loss of yet another lover. Thus, while Percival could carry out the full I&P paradigm on LaSalle, he could not for Broughton, namely because he entrusted the job to the KGB. He knew he would not survive confronting Broughton head-on because of MI6, claiming he was “too smart” to do so, but she was able to kill him herself and be vindicated; thus, her spot in the hierarchy above him is confirmed, and his rung is gone. 

Before dying, LaSalle took pictures of Percival’s midnight deal with Bremovych and left them in an envelope for Broughton. MI6 would never have excused Broughton for murdering a fellow agent without both the pictures and the tape proving that he was Satchel, and so despite being punished, LaSalle’s efforts helped Broughton escape her punishment for going against her superiors. Thus, she has subverted the paradigm twice with first Percival and now MI6. The hard proof of her “treason” is shown after the supposed resolution, when she meets with Bremovych in Paris to ostensibly hand over the watch. Bremovych plans to kill her in a setup after Percival proves that Broughton is the double agent, but she again miraculously kills them all and escapes in her plan to “get [her] life back.” The final twist is revealed: she was actually a CIA agent the whole time, and she was planted there (presumably) by Kurzfeld to get the watch. The highest rung on the ladder remains America in our cinematic tradition, and this becomes an upending of spy film conventions not only by replacing the male James Bond character with the female Lorraine Broughton but also by replacing MI6 with the CIA. The ending unravels so many plot twists that it left most critics lampooning the story and plot structure, but the convoluted-ness comes from the fact that everybody in the film is lying. In introducing a female character to a James Bond x John Wick lineage, Leitch and Theron crafted an even more complicated film than those two franchises, where the “trust no one” doctrine of spy/assassin stories guides the plot and main characters’ decisions; yet in the end, we cannot even trust her (We cannot trust a woman? And she’s the hero?). Whereas others see an unnecessarily complicated plot, I see the necessary product of combining spy (James Bond), assassin (John Wick), and femme fatale (Charlize Theron’s defining character role) movie tropes. This presents a much less contradictory upending of the I&P paradigm than Bombshell, namely by fusing the paradigm with a different type of “investigation and punishment” in the spy-thriller genre.