alexqueens

For Ukrainians, Atlantis must come across as an important piece of filmmaking.

Set in 2025, after an endurance conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the land is toxic and barren, and the only people we see are soldiers cleaning up the mess of a war-torn country and factory workers clinging to a job that's unlikely to last for long.

It's gloomy joyless stuff.

But for the casual audience bystander, Atlantis may not amount to much.

When there's dialogue between two people, it's more or less engaging, despite the lack of story. But when there are 10 minute still shots of nothing of importance materializing (which is often throughout the film), I'm sorry to say that it was like watching paint dry.

As it stands, Atlantis doesn't concern itself with the merits of a traditional narrative. Instead, it chooses to simply display an oppressive dystopia in a broken country.

First off, I'm biased, because of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Plus she's the lead, and is present on screen 97% of the time in Kate, so we're looking at a winning formula here.

Despite the annoying kid tag-along plot, Woody phoning it in, Japan's golden boy Tadanobu Asano being wasted in a mediocre role, and the tired old cliché of being double-crossed by those closest to you, this is still a Crank version of Mary doing her very own John Wick thing.

So it's a shame that this begins with her having only 24 hours to live and having to extract her revenge in that short timeframe, because I would very much like 5 more sequels of Mary shooting, stabbing and kicking all the people that make it onto her naughty list.

So if they fancy bringing her back to life through some bogus plot device for the sake of making a Kate 2: Crank it Up, I'm not gonna complain. In fact, I'll even pay Netflix a little extra just to think about it.