Atlas movie review: A lackluster AI-centric Sci-fi movie

A still from Atlas

Film: Atlas
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K Brown, Lana Parrilla, Mark Strong, Abraham Popoola
Director: Brad Peyton
Rating: 1.5
Runtime: 118 min

This sci-fi actioner has far more tech-mech portions than heart. The writers latch on to the current concern regarding AI. What happens if AI is developed to a point where humans become totally expendable? In this film the story has AI deciding that the only way to stop the war is to end humanity. So the future of computers becomes grist for action cinema. Don't know much about the science here but what transpires doesn't make much logical sense.

The film employs a large amount of visual effects and barely few actors of which Jennifer Lopez takes the lead and Mark Strong gets a much smaller role.

The screenplay by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite feels very derivative and borrowed. The film details the story of a woman, Atlas (Jennifer Lopez) who is described as anti-social. Her intel which was passed on to her by her deceased scientist mother and her childhood living experience with an AI companion/brother makes her useful for stopping a powerful AI enemy who happens to be orchestrating total destruction of life on Earth from another hostile planet.

This sometime in the future ‘doomsday cinema' prophesy has Earth subjected to an AI uprising, with bot Harlan (Simi Liu) becoming a terrorist, out to terminate humankind. After having been defeated by the International Coalition of Nations, Harlan retreats to another planet. Atlas (Jennifer Lopez) is an ICN analyst who has a special connection to Harlan. She devotes her life to the extraction of information from captured bots, and was called in to work on Casca (Abraham Popoola) from whom she finds Harlan's location. Incidentally, its her mother, Val (Lana Parrilla), who created the monster.

Atlas has a combative relationship with her capsule AI bot Smith. She refuses to be synced in a fruitless effort to protect herself from AI penetration. Don't look for intimacy there either. The messy CGI-heavy action encounters don't allow for any attachment. Harlan villainy is also not very compelling. The narrative is weighed down by a bad story, silly dialogue and plot holes aplenty.

With this Jennifer Lopez-produced work, Peyton who has previously directed Dwayne Johnson in films like ‘Rampage,' ‘San Andreas,' and ‘Journey 2: The Mysterious Island' was probably aiming for a bigger bounty. But that doesn't seem likely to happen with this straight-to-Netflix streamer. Much of the action choreography embodies video-game action. It feels noisy and runs berserk seemingly on auto-pilot. The portrayal of AI is also rather bizarre. The special effects are standard issue. It's the acting that fails the movie experience. Being a one-woman show, we have Lopez in almost every frame. She has to work in a confined space for most of the film but her acting is not up to the challenge. She fails to create mood or urgency. She also fails to evoke empathy or likability. Her performance lacks nuance or inflection. Her presence fails to lift the film from the rubble of post-apocalyptic hype. This one is a rather dull experience.