It only works if it's done in a believable and realistic manner, which would require her to be extremely fit (very powerful calves and forearm muscles), terribly quick (Bruce Lee quick), and know how to hit his vitals before he could react.

But that's not how these movies play out because the actresses they get for these roles aren't fighters, so none of their make-believe feminist power-fantasies look remotely believable.

I also bring up the point about the realism factor because I was watching some of the fights from Street Beefs recently and you can see how smaller skilled fighters can beat larger, unskilled muscle-heads. But in these movies the muscle-heads these 100lbs females are fighting are supposed to be skilled assassins/guards/contractors, and so when you see someone like Jolie beating them up using sloppily thrown punches and weak toothpick-thin kicks, none of it looks remotely believable.

Salt, actually, was more believable than most. IIRC she took lots of facial damage in the fights, and generally got tossed around like a rag doll.

I can't watch most movies like Atomic Blond, though, because I know they are absolute bullshit. Looks like Those That Wish Me Dead takes up where Bird Box left off.