Passable sci-fi action fare
Summary
Atlas has some surprisingly funny dialogue and a few decent action scenes to make for a fun Saturday night beer and pizza movie. Jennifer Lopez doesn’t make much of an impression as she spends most of the movie crying or being stubborn, but Smith has a few one-liners that make this maybe worth watching once… or just watch Terminator again instead.
Plot: A brilliant data analyst with a deep distrust of AI finds it may be her only hope when a mission to capture a renegade robot goes awry.
Review: I don’t think anyone was expecting Atlas to be an incredible piece of cinema and I went in with the lowest of expectations, but to be fair it was actually pretty entertaining. Jennifer Lopez is probably the weakest aspect of the film with her constant crying and complaining, but what elevated the material was Smith, the A.I. she is forced to work with when she is trapped on a planet. He has the best lines and there are a few funny moments which only just lift this above 2.5 stars.
Stuck in a mech suit Atlas (Lopez) doesn’t trust A.I. due to something from her past, but will she eventually bond with the machine to overcome adversity and save humanity? Take a guess…
This is generic stuff mostly copying Terminator (and even Avatar at one point) and a billion other movies warning us that it’s in our nature to destroy ourselves.
Mech suits make any film worth watching and it bothers me that I don’t have one of my own, but I’m hoping Santa will provide me with one this year.
In terms of action Atlas doesn’t disappoint with some shoot-outs, explosions and a cool final showdown with the villainous A.I. Harlan (Simu Liu). He makes for an interesting antagonist who like all the best villains thinks what he is doing is right; Liu gives a convincing performance where he comes across unsettling and creepy.
At an hour and 50 minutes Atlas mostly moves along at a decent pace, not going long without some threat or action set-piece to keep things interesting. There isn’t anything especially remarkable about it, but after the reviews I’d read I expect it to be far worse than it was.
Overall, Atlas is nothing we haven’t seen before with Jennifer Lopez not making for an especially interesting lead, but the script does have some funny moments and there are enough action sequences to make this a diverting one-time watch.