Creating insightful commentary on the Iraq War in 2025 can feel a bit late to the party. It’s a subject that’s been much discussed in film and television for almost twenty years, so it’s difficult to add something new to the conversation. Hailey Gates’ Atropia, about an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility in 2006 California, tries to be a slapstick comedy, satire, and drama all at once and never excels at any of it.
Fayruz (Alia Shawkat) works at Atropia, a simulated country created by the US military for immersive training exercises. As an aspiring actress, she takes the job very seriously as one of the few Iraqis fluent in Arabic at the site. Located in California and staffed with Hollywood crew, the other actors in “The Box” often roll their eyes at her ambition, whether it’s an Iraqi woman just working to get her green card or one of the many Latinos pretending to be Middle Eastern. Fake insurgents, played by US military vets, are led by Abu Dice (Callum Turner) and are meant to give new soldiers the experience of war before shipping out.
Based on actual military training exercises, the concept of Atropia is fascinating. We follow Fayruz as she bickers with her coworkers to get the best parts, films self-taped auditions and tries to showcase her talents to movie stars visiting the set. While the concept itself is a hook, the execution is where we start to muddy the waters. As Fayruz continues her work and develops a flirtation with Abu Dice, the plot becomes harder to follow. The rules of “The Box” are said to be immersive but the film plays fast and loose with this immersion, making it difficult to sort training exercises from the film plot and vice versa.
In addition, the film can’t decide a direction so it wanders between multiple genres. Is it a satire of the US military during the war in Iraq? Is it a romantic comedy about two misfits finding each other in a strange setting? Is it a drama about war veterans and the toll war takes on young men? In meandering through these questions, Atropia doesn’t manage to answer any of them well. Lacking a distinct tone just leaves the audience more confused than impressed.
The film introduces us to a wide array of characters, from our leads played by Shawkat and Turner to a plethora of side characters such as goofy military leaders played by Chloe Sevigny and Tim Heidecker, a fake journalist played by Jane Levy, and very young military privates in training. Unfortunately, these characters are played as tropes rather than fully realized people, and their two-dimensional personalities become tiresome even in a 100-minute runtime.
There are certainly some intriguing aspects to Atropia but its commentary on a war from almost twenty years ago lacks teeth because it can make these observations with the benefit of hindsight. It’s a fascinating concept and makes sense that it is an expanded short from 2019 by director Hailey Gates. Unfortunately, the jump to feature film just doesn’t feel fleshed out enough to convey meaningful commentary.
