Atomic Eden (2015) Review

“Atomic Eden” Theatrical Poster

Director: Nico Sentner
Cast: Fred Williamson, Mike Möller, Hazuki Kato, Everett Ray Aponte, Lorenzo Lamas, Wolfgang Riehm, Nico Sentner, Dominik Starck, Josephine Hies, Jens Nier, Martin Wunderlich, Carolina Rath, Alexander Mack
Running Time: 85 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

There’s a certain recipe for making action B-movies in the 21^st century. Step one usually involves finding a star from the same genre who was popular in the 80’s and 90’s and has a track record of saying yes to appearing in anything. Smart producers will have the likes of Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock on speed dial, or if you’re feeling lucky, perhaps drop a text to Eric Roberts. Step two involves taking whatever budget is leftover in an attempt to fill the cast with local talent, usually comprising of actors from the old Eastern Bloc and former parts of the USSR. Step three is to find your nearest bargain basement digital camera, and scout out remote and abandoned locations usually in the same area, then bingo, it’s time to start rolling!

The 2015 feature length debut of director Nico Sentner Atomic Eden doesn’t quite tick all of the above boxes, but it still follows the general rules. Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock were busy with The Martial Arts Kid in 2015, and Eric Roberts, well, he probably maxed himself out with the 25 movies he was in. So, instead, we get Fred ‘The Hammer’ Williamson! A legend of the blaxploitation genre having starred in the likes of Three the Hard Way and No Way Back, Williamson was 77 at the time of filming, and gives Atomic Eden the retro-cred that such productions seem to feel they should come with. A co-production between Germany, Ukraine, and the U.S., Atomic Eden was shot in English, which everyone does an amicable job of speaking (well, with the exception of Hazuki Kato, but I don’t think she was hired for her linguistic ability).

The plot involves a secret weapon (the ‘Atomic Eden’ of the title) created by the Nazis which was “designed to help Hitler win the war”, but ended up abandoned somewhere in a series of tunnels that were built under Chernobyl. Left behind after the nuclear fallout, now that parts of the area are safe to visit word on the street is the Soviets are after the secret weapon, so it’s up to Williamson and his former acquaintances to come together and stop it from falling into the wrong hands. “8 versus 800!” the promotional artwork screams at us (Crazy Samurai Musashi wouldn’t be impressed), although 100 seems much more accurate in terms of how many we actually see during the mercifully short duration (not counting the credits, the runtime just scrapes 75 minutes).

Williamson spends much of the first third of Atomic Eden randomly stepping into frame in what we’re supposed to believe are a variety of globe trotting locations (onscreen texts tells us we’re in towns nobody will have ever heard of in the likes of Romania, Germany, Latvia, Belgium, Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic). We meet the high kicking couple of The Fighter and The Samurai, played by Mike Möller (One Million K(l)icks) and Hazuki Kato (Falcon Rising), The Priest played by Wolfgang Riehm (Ultimate Justice), The Blade played by Dominic Starck (Iron Wolf), The Rookie played by Josephine Hies (Bad Impulse), and The Sniper is played by the director himself, Nico Sentner. The only member of the team Williamson doesn’t visit in person is The Texan, played by Everett Ray Aponte (The Hitman Agency), as he’s unsurprisingly in Texas, so gets a call instead.

These introductory scenes establish a few ground rules for Atomic Eden – we shouldn’t expect too much from Williamson apart from chomping on a cigar (which he admittedly looks cool doing), Germany is capable of being passed off as several different European countries, and we shouldn’t expect too much characterisation beyond the characters credited names. It’s even left ambiguous as to exactly who the group are, as they all seem to be meeting each other for the first time, so we’re left to assume Williamson went on an epic European road trip to recruit a bunch of unconnected randoms.

Once together the group take a minibus to Chernobyl, where we learn they can stay safely for 36 hours. The narrative quickly has everyone holed up in a number of sparsely decorated rooms which proceed to come under attack from faceless enemies decked out in white protective clothing and gas masks. That’s essentially the rest of Atomic Eden in a nutshell, which splits its time between action scenes and torturous interactions between the group. Acting is uniformly horrendous regardless of the competent English line delivery, lumbered with a clichéd script riddled with painful one-liners. Aponte is exceptionally annoying as The Texan, a walking stereotype and always accompanied by a soundtrack of guitars and harmonica. Some of his least annoying lines include “Yeeha!’ and “Don’t mess with Texas!”, spoken in between sipping from a bottle of moonshine.

If there’s one reason to watch Atomic Eden, and even this may be a stretch for some, then it’s to check out German martial arts sensation Mike Möller doing his thing. Möller was also the fight choreographer, and while the execution of his action direction from the other actors ranges from passable (Kato and Aponte) to downright laughable (Hies and Starck), it’s Möller himself that lights up the screen whenever he’s required to unleash. A flurry of flying kicks, punches, and takedowns, the choreography is clearly inspired by the golden era of Hong Kong action cinema, with recognizable moves like Casanova Wong’s iconic flying kick mixed in with more modern superman punches.

Möller is also given a one on one against the hulking Martin Wunderlich, for which Atomic Eden is his one and only film credit, making for a classic David versus Goliath (which is actually Wunderlich’s characters name) battle. Unfortunately director Sentner for some reason thought it would be ok to keep cutting away from the fight to other non-action related scenes, which is somewhat infuriating and completely interrupts the flow. Even the occasional adrenaline shot of Möller springing into action though isn’t enough to stop Atomic Eden feeling like it runs out of steam around the 1-hour mark. At the end of the day there’s only so many faceless lackeys in gas masks you can watch being offed before it starts to become monotonous, although it was a relief to see the good guys are equally expendable, with many getting hilariously unearned dramatic death scenes.

As if to make sure we’re all still awake, in the closing minutes Lorenzo Lamas shows up as the guy who recruited Williamson to retrieve the secret weapon, and gets to flex his shouty acting muscles. Lamas was a mainstay of the early 90’s American DTV action movie scene, with roles in the likes of Final Impact, Bounty Tracker, and Midnight Man making his face a regular fixture on the shelves of VHS rental stores. His appearance here amounts to nothing more than a cameo, and sets the stage for a sequel which I think we can safely say is unlikely to be made, but stranger things have happened.

Overall Atomic Eden feels too amateurish to really enjoy, likely to be a fun watch for those involved in making it but a tougher proposition for everyone else. Director Nico Sentner hasn’t helmed anything since, although he would reunite with cast members Everett Ray Aponte and Wolfgang Riehm for 2018’s The Hitman Agency, which was helmed by fellow cast member Dominic Starck (and that one did feature Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson!). In the case of Atomic Eden though, the digital look does the movies aesthetic no favours, and the painful script had me questioning whether I was going to make it to the end. Even its saving grace, martial arts wunderkind Mike Möller, has his own starring vehicle in the form of One Million K(l)icks, where he gets to really let loose (and speak in his native German). So what’s left to recommend Atomic Eden? Admittedly, not much.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3.5/10