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Atomic introduces its locations, such as Sahara Desert, Algeria, as “a smuggling route”, and then Caucasus Mountains, Russia, as “a Russian smuggling route”, and similar as it globetrots a bit.
As we first meet Max (Alfie Allen – SAS Rogue Heroes), he soon finds himself driving alone, courtesy of a sniper who caps his colleague, but before long, he meets up with JJ (Shazad Latif – The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance), who could just put him out of everyone’s misery, or could inadvertently turn this into a buddy-buddy comedy. I wonder which one they’ll pick? Well, it would be a short programme if they didn’t team up, and it would contravene what’s in the trailer.
JJ wants to go to Bengazi, while Max is heading to Beirut because he’s a drug dealer – part of the time also seeing a stranded kid tagging along who befriends JJ. However, circumstances keep them all together.
Alfie Allen’s sounding a bit like a young Michael Caine in this, as Max suggests JJ follows him to Beirut, so they can do a job together, involving statues full of nuclear fuel, obtained from some very bad men, all working for generic big baddie-types.
Briefly, Atomic has some occasional serious moments, but it’s mostly knockabout nonsense and feels very directionless, with lots of running, jumping, shooting and not a lot else. There’s absolutely nothing to fulfil the senses, here.
Atomic is on Sky Atlantic from tonight/tomorrow at 2am, with another showing at the more reasonable time of 9pm, although they’ll be available to watch on demand.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes per episode (5 episodes)
Release date: August 28th 2025
Studio: Sky Atlantic
Format: 2.00:1
Director: Shariff Korver
Producer: Peter McAleese
Creator: Gregory Burke
Writers: Gregory Burke, Ishy Din, Jiwon Lee, Clare McQuillan
Music: Nathan Klein
Cast:
Max: Alfie Allen
JJ: Shazad Latif
Carlos: Nezar Thalal
Oleg Kuzayev: Mikhail Safronov
Oksana Shirokova: Avital Lvova
Captain Sebti: Mansour Badri
Robert ‘Rab’ Mackintosh: Stuart Martin
Peter Holmes: Jacob George Wright
Daniel Lopez: Jaeme Velez
Rifaat Atallah: Mostafa Benkerroum
Young boy: Keni Emmanuelle
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.