Atomic Blonde - Why oh why?

I understand what you mean—there is a certain hardened edge to Atomic Blonde—but I would not say that the film aspires to "realism" per se. It does aspire to a sense of vague gravitas that it probably fails to achieve, hence my earlier points about insufficient character development and thematic focus. But the aesthetic manner is deliberately exaggerated and full of stylized (if dour) "bravado," befitting the movie's source material (a graphic novel).

Now, Atomic Blonde is not exactly a parody, like Kingsman seems to be. (I only viewed the trailer for the latest version, not any of the actual films.) But it is a sort of edgy fantasy—a fantasy with a hardcore sex-and-violence edge, if you will. The film suggests its postmodern intentions early on with the clip of Reagan's famous speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987, followed by the "that is not this movie" (or something like that) epigraph. In other words, Atomic Blonde is literally suggesting that this film will not constitute a realistic representation of Reagan-era Cold War geopolitics, but rather something like a delirious exaggeration—with a mean streak. I would also suggest that an espionage film with a techno/New Wave score does not aspire to realism. Rather, the score suggests postmodernism and irony—or at least an attempt at those qualities. For me, the attempt basically works in terms of entertainment yet not intellectually. 

For the record, I have not seen John Wick.