{"id":28408,"date":"2025-08-28T09:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T09:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28408\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T09:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T09:25:09","slug":"atomic-review-nuclear-themed-adventure-gets-off-to-an-explosive-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28408\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Atomic\u2019 review: Nuclear-themed adventure gets off to an explosive start"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nFrantic action of the opening double bill is much more impressive than impish trailer suggested\n<\/p>\n

The misleading trailers and the presence of Alfie Allen looking his most impish suggested this five-parter (Sky Atlantic, Thursday, August 28, 9pm and 10pm) was going to be one of those frantic, larky, knockabout sub-Tarantino romps where characters are dispatched with a bullet through the head, followed by a smartarse quip.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s frantic, alright. The pace of the opening double bill of episodes (the rest follow weekly) never lets up. There are a few bullets through heads too, as well as the occasional funny line.<\/p>\n

But the overall tone is serious. The plentiful action scenes are done with one foot planted in reality, while violent death, of which there\u2019s also a lot, is not treated as a joke, least of all in a scene where the victim is a young child.<\/p>\n

According to the credits, the series is \u201cinspired\u201d by The Atomic Bazaar, a non-fiction book by American journalist William Langewiesche, who died in June, about the lucrative smuggling of nuclear weapons to some of the world\u2019s most dangerously volatile nations.<\/p>\n

Atomic\u2019s writer Gregory Burke (Rebus, \u201971), merely uses the book as a peg on which to hang a slick, fast-moving, highly entertaining action adventure with a sometimes surprising amount of heart in among the mayhem.<\/p>\n

Allen plays carefree smuggler Max, who\u2019s driving through the Algerian desert to deliver a package of drugs to Beirut via Libya. On the return visit, he\u2019s supposed to be transporting a pair of small and presumably very valuable statues.<\/p>\n

Much to the irritation of his uncommunicative passenger, who claims to speak no English, Max \u2013 who says the only thing he believes in is love \u2013 bangs on interminably about his lovely girlfriend Laetitia (Charlie Murphy), whose picture he keeps pasted to the dashboard.<\/p>\n

\"Alfie<\/p>\n

Alfie Allen and Shazad Latif have great on-screen chemistry in ‘Atomic’. Photo: Sky<\/p>\n

The passenger becomes even less communicative when they\u2019re ambushed by a gang of jihadis who shoot him dead. Rather than killing Max too, the jihadis\u2019 leader \u2013 an Englishman played by Shazad Latif (Captain Nemo in Disney+\u2019s half-hearted Nautilus) \u2013 instead turns his gun on his comrades, wiping out all of them.<\/p>\n

When Max\u2019s unwanted new travelling companion, who demands he drive him to Benghazi, refuses to tell him his name, he christens him JJ, after the infamous Islamic State terrorist Jihadi John.<\/p>\n

Just when Max thinks his day can\u2019t possibly get any worse, it gets worse. JJ is being pursued by a group of mercenaries led by a raging, wide-eyed nutter called Rab (Stuart Martin, currently to be seen as a different raging, wide-eyed nutter in Netflix\u2019s Hostage).<\/p>\n

\n

For the first hour, \u2018Atomic\u2019 is a dizzying whirl of fights, flights, scrapes and shootouts<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Max and JJ escape by the skin of their teeth, picking up an orphaned young boy who\u2019s the only survivor of an ambush along the way, but run into more trouble, which sees Max\u2019s cargo go up in flames.<\/p>\n

After coming out on top in a violent confrontation with the drug cartel\u2019s reps, who understandably want to know where their goodies have gone, the pair manage to grab the statues and make a run for it. Before they leg it, however, a dying man ominously warns them to keep them two metres apart at all times.<\/p>\n

For the first hour, Atomic is a dizzying whirl of fights, flights, scrapes and shootouts as Max and JJ zip around locations in north Africa and the Middle East with corrupt cops, thuggish mercenaries, angry drug barons, Russian gangsters, intelligence agents and even a father bent on revenge on their tail.<\/p>\n

\"Samira<\/p>\n

Samira Wiley plays an undercover CIA agent in ‘Atomic’. Photo: Sky<\/p>\n

It\u2019s initially a little hard to keep up with who\u2019s who. Things settle down, however, when Samira Wiley (The Handmaid\u2019s Tale) enters the picture as Cassie Elliott, an undercover CIA agent whose cover job is university physics lecturer.<\/p>\n

Cassie, who happens to be a nuclear expert, helpfully explains that what Max and JJ are carrying in a pair of holdall bags are not just statues, but two clumps of enriched uranium.<\/p>\n

If they\u2019re brought too close together, there could be a reaction, or even \u201ca Hiroshima-sized explosion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Directed with real flair and kinetic energy by Sharriff Korver, Atomic rips along at a fine clip.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s great odd-couple chemistry between Allen and Latif, who bring a surprising amount of warmth and humanity to what could easily be unlikeable characters.<\/p>\n

An already fine cast is bolstered by Brian Gleeson as a starchy CIA man.<\/p>\n

Rating: Three stars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frantic action of the opening double bill is much more impressive than impish trailer suggested The misleading trailers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,327,9162],"class_list":{"0":"post-28408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-pat-stacey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}