The Atomic Kid Movie Analysis

It is also important to notice that the villains in both films have queer qualities. In The Atomic Kid, Blix’s best friend, Stan(Robert Strauss), is tricked by a Soviet spy into taking confidential photos of Blix. The Soviet spy is represented as a “hedonistic dandy”, and the pansy figure in films is always associated with implied homosexuality. In the Cold War period, homosexuals were seemed as major threats to national security because gay people were more likely to be blackmailed and leak information(Starck,132) The educated, cosmopolitan and refined spy strongly contrasts with Stan who is greedy, simple but loyal. In the mid 1950s, the majority of the Casinos in Las Vegas were still western theme and served mostly lower and middle class

Mr. Chow(Ken Jeong), the head of an international gang, displays a high level of aggressiveness, despite that he talks in a high pitch voice and wears women’s shoes. His first appearance in the film is when he jumps out of a car’s truck naked and violently attacks the main characters with a crowbar. Chow keeps on threatening the characters for money and uses offensive queer slang to insult them. The slang becomes Chow’s empowerment and weapon to fight back. Interestingly, Chow was not brought to justice in the end, but the main characters were arrested by corrupted police. Chow’s character is a evil homosexual stereotype, but the film offers an unconventional ending for him. The film creates a fantasy that people do not face consequences when they participate in criminal activities. Las Vegas has a long history with organized crime, and many casinos were ran by the mob (Griffin,38). At that time, the crime rate in Las Vegas was low not because the police was being efficient, but because no one dared to mess with the mob. The film acknowledges the gangster culture of Las Vegas and mocks the local police for their lack of ability to stop real

The beautiful nurse, Audrey (Elaine Davis), in The Atomic Kid takes care of Blix and , for no apparent reason, falls in love with him, whereas the stripper with a heart of gold, Jade (Heather Graham), in The Hangover remains the main character’s helper and eventually is left behind like everything else happened to the protagonists in Las Vegas. Audrey and Jade’s characters are unrealistic because they do not ask questions and continue to be understanding and supportive to any kind of ridiculous situations the main protagonists are in, like when Blix escapes his room or when Stu asks for a divorce after Jade just helped him win 80,000 dollars. The lack of complexity in female characters may be caused by the fact that Las Vegas is about selling fantasies, and women in Las Vegas adopt the fantasy in order to make money in order to indulge the pleasure with hyper consumerism. Audrey remains healthy after sharing a kiss with the radioactive Blix, and Jade still has her child’s custody even though her child was found unattended in a hotel closet.The films affirm the fantasy of the city without consequences in the female characters.

The Atomic Kid fantasized the Las Vegas in the atomic age and is valuable as a relic of a Hollywood’s fantasy of Las Vegas as a city with no consequences in the Cold War period. The city is protrayed as an testing site for the Atomic bombs. By showing none negatively affected by the bombing, the film