ATLAS (2024) - Movie Review

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Director: Brad Peyton
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Mark Strong, Abraham Popoola, Lana Parrilla
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Drama, Adventure
Writer: Leo Sardarian, Aron Eli Coleite
Runtime: 118 min
Rated: PG-13 for strong sci-fi violence, action, bloody images and strong language
Buy This Movie: Netflix

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Synopsis:

A brilliant counterterrorism analyst with a deep distrust of AI discovers it might be her only hope when a mission to capture a renegade robot goes awry.

Review:

The Netflix sci-fi action film "Atlas" is yet another made-for-streaming misfire. Director Brad Peyton is mostly know for fun, but not very smart action-adventure fare like the Dwayne Johnson-starrers "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island", "San Andreas" and "Rampage". Peyton's latest effort is probably his worst, and that's saying a lot.

The director has said the video game series "Titanfall" was an inspiration for the film, and that's an understatement. It's a blatant rip-off of "Titanfall", and I'm actually curious why they didn't just go for a straigth-up adaptation of the games.

"Atlas" is first and foremost a star vehicle for Jennifer Lopez, who is front and center as the titular character for the entire movie. Lopez is decent enough here, but at times her performance feels forced and even unintentionally funny. Netflix duds like "The Mother" and "Shotgun Wedding" ended up being some of the worst films she's ever made. Now with "Atlas" she has completed a trifecta of crappy movies across a wide variety of genres.

It's also too long. Clocking in at two hours, it's a sluggish behemoth, with a plot that crawls at a snail's place, frequently stopping dead in its tracks for more exposition dumps. I won't even complain about the whole plot not making sense, because clearly nobody cared about it. They didn't even bother to fix several blatant continuity errors. The filmmakers are apparently trying to say something intelligent about the rise of AI, but the script gives you no more profound insight than an episode of "Knight Rider".

The visual effects are cartoonish and look like $100 million thrown out the window. It's almost as if the project started out as some sort of anime. The action is unsatisfying and sparse, as Lopez and the voice of Gregory James Cohan spend ample time getting to know each other in endless scenes that pad out the runtime. Simu Liu occasionally pops out to do his evil stare and spout menacing lines, but he's overall a terrible villain. Sterling K. Brown is barely in this movie, and it's a shame, because he would have made a great co-lead.

"Atlas" is a painfully dull action movie, and an underwhelming sci-fi. Almost everything about it is poorly conceived and executed. "The Creator" is a much better example of how to blend action and sci-fi while also efficiently exploring intriguing concepts pertaining to artificial intelligence. Watch that one instead.

SCORE: 4/10