Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin.
Note that Rozhin's grandfather was in the NKVD.
[ColonelCassad] I watched the domestic TV series "Atom".
It turned out to be a quite watchable comic book movie based on the Soviet nuclear project.
The main message is quite correct - under the leadership of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, the Chekists, intelligence officers and scientists together implemented the nuclear project and gave the country a nuclear shield. And not only that.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich did not even shoot anyone or "grind them into camp dust", he just threatened a couple of times in the style of meme jokes like "You can be free. Bye" and a demonstration of Stalin's resolution "Calm the fool".
In general, he effectively managed a zealous fool from counterintelligence, a project curator mired in women (I can't stand Guskov at all after "4 days in May", he was a real piece of crap), infantile scientists and Germans brought from Germany.
However, in the entire series, only one character was shoved into the camp, and even then, for good reason (his personal dislike for the Germans was ruining the project), to dig a pit for a reactor under the supervision of the GULAG chief. In general, the Bloody KGB in the film looks rather positive and mainly scares, rather than punishes. It threatens with a finger, but-but, make a bomb, comrades.
Well, Fitin also looks like a smart leader (as does the intelligence line, although it is still quite crumpled), and Kurchatov is cured of infantilism somewhere in the middle and he himself begins to build scientists who do not understand where they ended up and what they are doing. When the Bloody KGB organizes everything correctly, Soviet scientists make scientific breakthroughs, and our intelligence agents drag secret documents to the USA - everything works out in the end and Lavrenty Pavlovich is happy.
Stalin is not in the film, so he is the main one here. Perhaps this is the most complimentary film about Beria of all that I have seen, although this is rather because he is not particularly scolded here, which distinguishes him favorably from the usual perestroika and post-perestroika films, where Beria is usually a "bloody executioner".
In general, if you do not take the film too seriously and do not consider all this as a manual on the history of the Soviet nuclear project (this is immediately a fibroid), then it is quite possible to watch it. A kind of comic book movie. If it were not for the sagging "love stories", it would have looked more cheerful. Some scenes are shot well, although it is obvious that the series did not have enough budget for more colorful scenes with equipment and a nuclear test.
In general, it is so-so shot, but the film has the right message. They noted the contribution of everyone - scientists, intelligence officers, and the Bloody KGB. As it was. Without any of this "contrary to".
And the fact that the authors piled up a bunch of improvisation is more a question for the script. In some moments I laughed at the stupidity of what was happening.
But I repeat, it is quite watchable.