Atropia invades theaters nationwide on January 23.
By Elazar Abrahams
Atropia has a brilliant premise. It’s set inside a U.S. military role-playing facility, where actors perform a fictional Middle Eastern country for soldiers’ training exercises. The line between performance and reality starts to blur. It’s a sharp, clever setup for a satire about the War on Terror, the American gaze, and the strange theater of manufactured conflict.
Unfortunately, the film ends up being a nothingburger.
Written and directed by Hailey Gates and starring Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner, Atropia wants to be a political satire and romance, and it often feels like the movie keeps shifting lanes without building momentum in any of them. A jumble of ideas with a defined tone, if you will.
The frustrating part is that the film has real ingredients. Shawkat is reliably watchable, and Turner has a natural charisma that makes him easy to track even when the story is drifting. But the characters aren’t developed in a way that builds emotional stakes. It doesn’t lay the groundwork needed for the relationship it’s asking viewers to invest in, and by the time the story hits the later stretch, it’s easy to feel unmoored.
As satire, it lands even softer. The first few minutes point toward something sharp and contemporary, but the film’s critique often feels broad and undercooked, like it’s circling its own target without taking more than easy shots. It’s clever no doubt, but not polished enough.
So what’s left is what makes this a frustrating watch: a movie that’s clearly ambitious, with a setup that should be electrifying, but that ends up feeling like a forgettable January release.
I give Atropia a C+.
TV and City 