Patti Cake$

This review was first published by The Student Pocket Guide

Back in January, a bidding war broke out at the Sundance Film Festival for the distribution rights to a small film with a relatively unknown cast and an unusual story. Fox Searchlight eventually won, and paid $9.5 million for the privilege to distribute Patti Cake$, a story of an overweight white girl from New Jersey whose dream it is to make it as a rapper. It proved to be something of a crowd-pleaser but, ultimately, it relies too heavily on formula to become a real classic.

Directed by Geremy Jasper (who cut his teeth making music videos), Patti Cake$ is strangely engaging in terms of its full-on style, unafraid as it is to perform (explicit) verbal gymnastics as its characters rap-battle their way to respect and money. And money is a big problem for Patricia “Dumbo” Dombrowski (played by Australian Danielle Macdonald), who lives with her dysfunctional mother (Bridget Everett) and ill grandmother (Cathy Moriarty, perhaps best known as Vickie La Motta in Raging Bull). Fending off calls from health providers threatening legal action for unpaid healthcare bills, Patti is sent out by her mother to work hospitality jobs in order to finance her grandmother’s care. Of course, she’d rather be in the studio recording some sick beats with her friend Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay) and trying to hit the big time as a rapper.

Patti’s story is told with a visual flair which matches the frenetic rhythm of her music. In an early scene, she puts on headphones and literally flies into the air whilst listening to her musical idol O-Z (and a later scene proves that you should never meet your idols). Indeed, there’s something Shakespearian about the rapping, and Danielle Macdonald is to be commended for her performance – restrained and explosive in equal measure. The problem is that the film’s themes, especially set within the disordered context of her home-life, are never allowed to take centre stage. Instead, the underdog narrative spills over into formulaic cliché and lessens any really interesting social commentary on growing up with little money or prospects in North East America. 

Despite the great performance from Macdonald and the likeability of her character, Patti’s choices seem a little outmoded, as if written into the screenplay to further push the film towards crowd-pleasing territory, rather than for any sense of realism. For instance, Patti produces a mix tape on CD (I mean, when was the last time you burnt a CD?!) with her newly formed group which features her wheelchair-bound grandmother on vocals. A touch of comedy, perhaps, but it jars slightly.

That said, you can’t fault the enthusiasm or energy with which the film approaches its musical sequences, whether an impromptu rap battle in a car park or an organised talent competition complete with pulsing lights and roaring crowds. It is in these moments that Patti Cake$ is perhaps at its strongest, and you can’t help but feel a little uplifted by the whole white female rap star thing, especially as Patti attempts to lose the cruel nickname she was given in high school in favour of her stage name “Killa P”. Some have drawn analogies with the 2009 Gabourey Sidibe film Precious (indeed, it even features in a rapper’s lyrics directed at the overweight Patti), but the two are polls apart. Whereas Precious is a hard-hitting and sometimes brutal drama, Patti Cake$ is a much lighter affair and not a very useful comparison.

Patti’s narrative trajectory is a fairly obvious one but – and I will always maintain this – just because you know where a plot is headed, doesn’t necessarily mean that your enjoyment will be lessened. This is true in the case of Patti Cake$, and seeing Patti chasing a dream is as rewarding as finding out that Waitrose have just half-priced everything in the bakery section. The core of the story, however, needs to remain believable and, as Patti barges her way into a self-styled anarchist’s woodland recording studio with her grandmother asleep in her wheelchair outside, it just doesn’t ring true. As anarchists go, however, Mamoudou Athie’s is really rather mainstream, and on revealing to Patti that he is the anti-Christ, an unfazed Patti responds with the great line “cool, I think I’m Episcopalian”. 

There’s an emotional core to Patti Cake$ which overrides some of the less believable elements of the plot, and the narrative of Patti escaping her dead-end jobs and wanting to make something of herself does make the heart warm. The music fizzes with energy and Danielle Macdonald, in particular, is a great screen presence. In the end though, we’ve seen much of it before and, much like the lyrical hooks in Patti’s raps, the immediate effect soon wears off as you leave the cinema.

Clapperboard Rating: * * * 

Atomic Blonde

If you look up Atomic Blonde on IMDb, the top trivia fact is that Charlize Theron cracked two teeth whilst playing the role of MI6 field agent Lorraine Broughton. It’s a wonder she didn’t crack her skull during filming, as Atomic Blonde is a visceral and confident neo-noir, with bone-crunching fight sequences and an equally-arresting visual flair. Yet, despite the pumped-up action and neon aesthetic, it is a film which lacks a narrative of comparable quality or energy.

Fresh from her success in Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron is back in the thick of the action, following a spy trail in 1989 Berlin, shortly before the fall of the Wall. Despatched by MI6 to uncover a double agent and recover the List – a microfilm containing the names of active Soviet field agents – Agent Broughton soon discovers that there are plenty of people in East Berlin who want to see her dead. 

As location names are displayed as if spray painted onto the screen during the opening sequences, and a 1980s synth-pop soundtrack blares out, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Atomic Blonde is going to be a pulpy and slightly off-the-wall thriller. Whilst it’s true that these early scenes have a definite zany edge to them, dominated by a soft-purple colour palate as Theron emerges battered and bruised from an ice bath, this bold tone soon gives way to more conventional action film tropes. 

James McAvoy plays an eccentric MI6 station chief and is, at first, Broughton’s main contact in Berlin. Like the rest of the cast (which includes Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan and John Goodman in supporting roles) McAvoy’s is a competent and watchable performance, and sits well with the film’s slightly grungy style. It is Theron, however, who really shines, and is as magnetic an actress as they come. In a variety of striking outfits and bleach-blonde hairstyles, Theron struts around Berlin with a sense of purpose and into colourfully-lit bars and clubs with magnetism. 

Even when she is covered in blood and clutching a cigarette in bruised hands, Theron shimmers with both beauty and menace. By all accounts, she did many of her own stunts – no small task given the film’s approach to the fight sequences. There’s no denying the high level of violence in the film or the skill with which the action sequences are filmed. 

This is down to the director, David Leitch, who is a former stunt co-ordinator and second unit director, and his effective sense of pacing and fight choreography is evident in an brilliant one-shot fight sequence in a stairwell. Although, in reality, composed of 40 separate shots stitched together, it is no less gripping or affecting as Theron shoots, stabs and punches her way out of danger. Indeed, the sequence is made all the more effective by Leitch allowing the actors moments to catch their breath in amongst the chaos and violence, their characters gasping for air as well as survival. 

Whilst the spy world is invariably dominated by men, Atomic Blonde is very much driven by the women. Aside from Theron’s detachment and commitment to her violent necessities (literally anything becomes a weapon in her hands), Sofia Boutella plays a French agent, with whom Broughton gets in touch, quite literally, as an explicit sex scene between the pair seemingly comes from nowhere. Little does Toby Jones’ MI6 officer know when he asks Broughton if she made contact with the French agent. Like Theron, Boutella is dressed to kill, as they say, and the sense of female agency here – where the guys don’t get a look-in – is refreshing.

All this sensuality, style and violence can only take you so far, however, as the plotting of the film is pretty poor. It’s a real shame that the tension in the fight scenes isn’t mirrored by the narrative, which meanders all over the place, proving to be difficult to follow and, at times, rather lacklustre. There’s no sense that these grand spy games actually matter, little emotional engagement with the characters, and a general feeling that, to quote an over-used phrase, it’s a case of style over substance. 

As spy films go, Atomic Blonde is a cut-above in terms of its action and its leading performance. Charlize Theron is beguiling and fierce in equal measure, and the whole look of the film is something to be enjoyed. The lack of tension in the narrative is, unfortunately, a fatal mistake which renders proceedings rather unconvincing. Theron may have gone through pain during the making of this film, but one can’t help asking: after the neon colours fade from the screen and your mind, was it really worth it?

Clapperboard Rating: * * *