"The 355" Review: You've Seen This...Done Better
The only thing refreshing about The 355 is an all female lead ensemble cast. It has the bones of a decent spy film but is missing the muscle and sinew to bring it all together. You’ve seen this before and done so much better!
The film starts with a military team crashing in on the house of a warlord. The shootout ends with one lone agent, Luis (Edgar Ramirez) retrieving a drive that has the power to take planes out of the sky and shut down power grids. It’s a weapon of mass destruction that will start World War III and that’s all you need to know because how it functions doesn’t really make much sense. Thus we have our McGuffin (an object in a movie that everyone wants) that the film keeps as the center.
We’re slowly introduced to our cast of characters. Mace (Jessica Chastain) and Nick (Sebastian Stan) work for the CIA and are going after the drive when Marie (Diane Kruger) steps in to get it. As not to spoil the plot, one by one other agents from agencies around the world come in to the fold. Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o), Graciela (Penelope Cruz), and Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan) all step up willingly or unwillingly to help stop possible annihilation of the world.
Character development is poor in a genre that demands it. It takes smart writing to We’re given scenes that inform us that Khadijah has a boyfriend and Marie is a lone wolf trying to evade the shadow of her father’s past, but they don’t have any depth to them. The movie plays out like a beat sheet from a first draft of a better espionage flick. As much as I love Jessica Chastain, she is gifted two fight scenes that seem to go on far longer than needed in this film. Some of the choreography plays out like a one size fits all when it should have played to each particular character’s strengths and physicality.
Co-writer/director Simon Kinberg has good and great films to his producer credits: Logan, Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Chappie, and more. Producing is a different skill than directing though. This film lacks direction. The best action directors can get the audience acquainted with the setting and space a scene is being shot in with an establishing wide-shot and then push in on action. There are so many times where characters enter a setting but seem to have magically appeared in a space due to poor camera direction and editing.
The 355 has the formula of a spy film but lacks needed elements to make the equation add up to a satisfying outcome. The cast have given us memorable performances in the past, but this will be a film that we quickly forget about and that they were involved in. It may be worthy of a Netflix night, but definitely not worth getting out in these COVID streets to see in theaters!
Rating: D+
"Dark Phoenix" Review: Bring the Reboot Already
The real hero in Dark Phoenix is Hans Zimmer. His score elevates the film to a darker, more somber mood. It’s just unfortunate that the writing doesn’t quite match the composition, because if it had, this would be an excellent final bow!
The X-Men have elevated themselves to friends of humanity thanks to Professor Charles Xavier’s (James McAvoy) crafting. After a mission to space goes awry, the team is sent up to retrieve the astronauts. Of course, no mission can go perfectly and rather than letting the solar flare hit her team, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) absorbs it. Fortunately, she doesn’t die, but unfortunately, it wasn’t a solar flare she absorbed either. As time proves, it’s something more powerful.
This franchise is known to have horrible or half baked villains. Enter Vuk (Jessica Chastain). I wish I could tell you what she is and the depth of her power, but the movie didn’t tell me. So all I know is that she’s an alien life form who came to Earth with what was left of her fledgling empire and took the body of a bleach blonde woman. Their goal is to retrieve the power that went in to Jean, rebuild on Earth and they will stop at nothing to get it.
Where Dark Phoenix soars is in the action sequences. Seeing certain characters’ power on display is entertaining. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) shines with some of the sheer might he possesses. Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) gets to go ham for a moment of line of sight teleportation at it’s finest. The climactic train sequence is definitely of note.
The problem that we’ve come to expect with these films is its character development. You just don’t care. Jean’s backstory is shown, but her family is nothing more than a setup. Quite frankly, for this to be the classic ascension of Jean to the Phoenix, she barely gets to do much on screen. There was an opportunity to make her really dark, but that didn’t happen. They could have put her full power on display. She can wipe out planets in the comics for goodness sake! Instead, you could call her the Accidental Phoenix in this film because many of the bad things she does aren’t necessarily on purpose. They come from an “oops I did it again” motive. Wins and losses are just beats on a screenwriter’s page here. The big bad Vuk is certainly just an antagonist in the film whose team seems invincible without explanation.
I’ll give co-writer/director Simon Kinberg credit for trying here. This was an effort in the right direction. The tone felt right, the costume design tried, the cast tried, Hans Zimmer infused his superhuman score, but alas, they just couldn’t get this up the hill of good filmmaking. Did I mention Hans Zimmer’s score is awesome? It’s entertaining, but if you wait to catch it when it’s streaming you’ll probably do yourself and your wallet a favor this weekend!
Rating: C-