Bullet Points: Atone
Before I begin getting into the nuts and bolts of 2019’s Atone, this movie deserves a round of applause. So everybody put your hands together for Atone for managing to come up with a Die Hard scenario that has never been done before…
Atone is Die Hard in a megachurch.
- Grieving Widow: Laura Bishop (Jaqueline Fleming) is a former special ops soldier, a mother and a grieving widow. As the movie begins, Laura is coming up on the one year anniversary of her husband’s accidental death… a death Laura feels at least partially responsible for. Laura left her security job after the death of her husband so she could focus on raising her young daughter. With the bills stacking up, it is time for Laura to return to work and she does just that with some parental prodding from her dad, Clarke. Clarke has arranged for Laura to return to her job working for Reverend Mark Shaw (Robert Rusler, Thrashin’) at Shaw’s new megachurch that is days away from opening.
- Back to Work: When Laura arrives for her first day back on the job she gets the lay of the land from the new head of security for the church, Xander Worth. Once the tour is over, Xander takes Laura to a meeting with Reverend Shaw and his deacons… it is there they break the news to her that the church’s youth center will be named after her late husband… Laura thanks the Reverend but then quickly excuses herself as she is overcome with emotion. She steps outside to get some air and collect her thoughts… and that is about the same time a group of masked men with obvious military background enter the facility, shooting members of the security team and chaining the doors. All of the terrorists are referred to by a color… with White (Columbus Short) being the top of the food chain and Black (Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) serving as White’s right hand man.
- Mama Bear Mode: After Laura has composed herself, she tries to get back into the church, but the doors are locked… she keeps walking around and trying doors and they are all locked. Then she spots her daughter’s bike near one of the entrances… this puts Laura into Mama Bear Mode and she happens upon a masked man about to chain the last open door… she pushes her way in and soon takes out her first color of the rainbow… Die Hard in a megachurch has officially begun. To her credit, Laura is laser focused on getting her daughter out of the building and to safety and when some of the terrorists get in the way of that mission, she eliminates them.
- Atone For Your Sins: At first it appears that the terrorists are just in this for the money… and while 14 million dollars is a lot of cash, there’s more to this siege than money (plus they siphon off the funds to various charities through anonymous donations). For White this attack on the megachurch is personal. White has a vendetta against Reverend Mark Shaw… the land the megachurch was built on once belonged to White’s mother, but when his mother took ill and needed the Reverend by her side he was nowhere to be found. White dredges up more of the Reverend’s dirty laundry and then forces him to get on camera and spill his guts… if he doesn’t the explosives planted by White’s team will be detonated and the church and everyone inside (including White himself) will be blown to kingdom come.
Atone is a mixed bag… some stuff it does well, but there are other things that are a miss.
The real issues White has with Shaw are great. It is easy for the audience to understand what would drive White to the extremes he has gone to in order to bring down a man the rest of the world saw as a beacon of light. But why did all the other people at the church, who were duped into thinking Reverend Shaw was a good and decent man who could never do any wrong, have to die? Were they just determined to be guilty by association?
And what about Laura Bishop? As the protagonist she kind of takes a backseat once the White/Shaw angle really starts taking shape. Plus, the movie tried to do too much with her… we first see her mixing it up in some underground fighting circuit, then she goes into John McClane mode for the middle of the movie, but right at the end of the film it seems like they are trying to turn her into the female Equalizer, Roberta McCall.
When it is all said and done I can’t really recommend watching this one, but I can definitely recommend reading these Bonus Bullet Points…
- If You Ever: …wanted to see WWE Superstar Sheamus fight a woman in the ladies room, then Atone is the movie for you.
- Worst Moment Award: To me the worst part of Atone is the reaction shots of the parishioners that are watching Reverend Shaw atone for his sins on the Internet… these reaction shots slightly edge out the horrible CGI explosions that come later in the film.
- In The Name of the Father: After Black kills someone he does the sign of the cross and then kisses his two guns. It is a nice little quirk for the character and the type of quirky thing I’ll likely remember when the rest of this film becomes a distant memory.
