Eye For Film >> Movies >> Atropia (2024) Film Review
Atropia
Reviewed by: Jeremy Mathews

We’ve all seem films about life during wartime, but here’s one about life during simulated war. Hailey Gates’s Atropia takes place during the Iraq War in a fake town in the California desert, where the US military runs simulations to prepare outgoing soldiers for the chaos of the conflict. Insurrectionists plot, IEDs boom (or don’t, in cases of technical difficulties), and villagers shout in broken Arabic – most of them are native Spanish-speakers.
While Gates has found an intriguing setting for her war satire, it’s less clear what she wants to say with it. The film flops between themes of ambition, romance, military leadership and environmental issues without pulling much insight from any of them. Maybe the goal was to place the audience in the fog of (not quite) war, but the result is an unsatisfying narrative arc that fails to deliver the bite of good satire or the poignancy of a stirring message movie.
The film had not been a festival darling after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, so when the US Dramatic Competition jury awarded it the top prize, festival-goers were as perplexed as they were when they finished watching it.
The movie has the most focus during its early scenes, as we meet Fayruz. Played by the always compelling Alia Shawkat, Fayruz is an aspiring actress from Iraq who dreams of making it as a Hollywood star. She approaches her role-playing in Atropia as if she were acting in a prestigious drama, and coaches her fellow cast members to take their work to new, emotional heights, and teaches them a little Arabic in the process.
Even if the gags are hit and miss in these early scenes, the direction seems clear as news comes around that a Hollywood actor – played by Channing Tatum, of course – is coming to town to research an upcoming movie. Fayruz sees the possibility to make an impression with a show-stopping (simulation-stopping?) performance, but she’ll only get the chance if her mustard-gas chemist character is discovered. So, she drops some hints about her location to some of the clueless new soldiers.
The self-important Hollywood actor bit isn’t new, but it’s a reliable comedic setup, and suggests a potential through-line for the film as Fayruz tries to bend the simulation to her own use. However, that thread abruptly disappears in favour of a different plot about the new insurrectionist leader, Abu Dice (Callum Turner), a real, high-skill US war veteran who uses what he learned in Iraq to maintain a competent and authentic opposition to the soldiers-in-training.
The setting is the movie’s greatest asset, yet it can’t quite get a grasp on the rules of the place. It’s supposedly a full-time simulation, but sometimes we see POV shots suggesting soldiers are watching at vulnerable times for the insurrectionists, but then nothing happens. Of course, the town failing to properly teach strategy and consequences could serve as part of the satire, but the film doesn’t seem interesting in driving that point home, instead leaning on an unconvincing romance and, as the end inches closer, unearned sentiment.
The only satisfying recurring gag involves an endangered desert tortoise that, various videos and signs remind us, should not be touched. It’s perhaps a metaphor for governments trying to enter places that are already inhabited, whether by people or wildlife. Or maybe it’s just silly fun. It’s hard to tell in a film with such an unclear sense of itself.
Reviewed on: 01 Feb 2025