A scene from ‘Atlas’

When you crave mindless fireworks on screen, the universe — via Netflix — answers AtlasBrad Peyton who kept us so happy San Andreas And violent conduct is back with this sci-fi actioner who pretends to discuss deep and meaningful things, like whether an AI’s trillions of lines of code have souls, when really he just wants to have fun blowing things up. And he blows things up in pretty spectacular fashion.

In the future, the AI ​​becomes self-aware and attacks humans under the leadership of Harlan (Simu Liu). After a series of attacks, including one on Bangalore in which “more than 500,000 people were killed by AI-controlled drone strikes,” Harlan escapes to GR-39, a planet in the Andromeda galaxy.

The International Coalition of Nations (ICN) is formed to fight this threat and Harlan is declared Public Enemy No. 1, the first AI terrorist. 28 years later, Atlas (Jennifer Lopez), a grumpy counter-terrorism analyst working for the ICN, is awakened by her smart home – she fell asleep playing chess with it.

He is intelligent, as evidenced by his 71 consecutive wins at chess, and his genius-level IQ is indicated by his charmingly wild Einstein hair. General Booth (Mark Strong), who refuses to spare Atlas “because he’s not user-friendly”, has an assignment for him. Casca (Abraham Popoola), Harlan’s fearsome AI soldier, has been captured and Booth wants Atlas to interrogate him.

A scene from ‘Atlas’

Atlas (why would a parent impose such a name on their child), has some history with Harlan and Casca, as it was his scientist mother Val Shepherd (Lana Parrilla) who created Harlan. Using the principles of a smartphone, she created a cognitive intelligence… and look where that leads. Atlas tricks Casca into finding out where Harlan is hiding and the ICN decides to send a mission led by Colonel Banks (Sterling K. Brown) to capture Harlan or his CPUs.

Atlas insists on going along because she knows Harlan best as she has studied the tiny creature for 28 years. Though she tells the crew to stay away from all digital trails, arriving at the first briefing with printouts, they don’t listen and it falls on Atlas to save the world and overcome his distrust of artificially intelligent beings, starting with his AI companion Smith (Gregory James Kohan).

The explosions are well portrayed, the GR-39 is depicted in an interesting way, and the final battle is vaguely reminiscent of Terminator Harlan’s with a glinting eye. Lopez’s remarkable star power overcomes any plot flaws while Strong and Brown do their part – the former is the wise counselor and the latter the wise-cracking tough guy. Liu doesn’t have much to do other than look menacing, which he does with confidence and well-dressed swagger.

Though not as relentless as Lopez Mother, AtlasWith its regular battles, cheeky jokes and explosions, it provides a suitable adrenaline fix.

Atlas is currently streaming on Netflix