The 355 Review: A Powerhouse In A Weak Sauce Mission: Impossible Riff

Every part of Simon Kinberg’s bulging, clumsy spy film The 355 Sounds good on paper: Five of Hollywood’s most famous actresses come together to portray global intelligence officers fleeing their respective governments in a film fusion Oceans 8 and the Jason Bourne, James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises with the recent trend towards aggressive action films with a female front. (Alone from 2021: Kate, Gunpowder Milkshake, The protected one, and shock.) In their association, women stand for inclusion, empowerment and validation. The 355‘s nonsensical screenplay, written by Theresa Rebeck and Kinberg, pushes those positive things down the audience’s throats without ever making them specific or insightful enough to mean anything.

For Kinberg, the writer of the 2005 film Brad Pitt / Angelina Jolie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the espionage genre should be familiar territory. In fact, you can see how he’s reaching for that same romantic dynamic between his main cast here. CIA officers Mace (Jessica Chastain) and Nick (Sebastian Stan) open the film and try to recover a deadly data key that is kept in Paris by Colombian DNI agent Luis (Édgar Ramírez). Although Nick is enthusiastic about Mace and even proposes marriage to her, she does not want to give up her energetic career in favor of a stable life. Chastain and Stan are unfortunately not Jolie and Pitt. You have all the chemistry of cheap red wine on a white carpet.

Kinberg complicates the setup with a boring web of intrigue: Chastain and Stan compete with other governments trying to get the data key. Her field agents include the fully independent German BDN agent Marie (Diane Kruger) and Graciela (Penélope Cruz), a married mother of two and a DNI therapist who is close to Luis and who hopes to bring him back into the ranks. The quartet is later betrayed by an unknown villain whose identity doesn’t take much brain power to figure out. Their respective countries all believe that they have become renegades too. To clear their names, Mace, Graciela and Marie work with MI6 computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) and Chinese MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing).

Photo: Universal Pictures

Of the quintet, Chastain is the least credible spy. Often times, when she talks on her hidden earbud, she puts her hand angrily around almost her entire head, which makes her coverage evident in the crowd. In the sequences in which the five women try to infiltrate a Moroccan bazaar, costume designer Stephanie Collie opts for a pompous style over practicality and dresses Chastain in a huge white felt hat and a cream-colored suit. Who would not discover a lavishly dressed white woman who speaks to herself, holding a hand in front of her ear, in the midst of a crowd of plainly dressed browns?

The questionable costume choices aren’t the only craftsmanship flaw. Even though The 355 tries to maneuver with the kinetic verve of a globetrotter adventure, the traces of filming on generic sets can be found throughout this film. Sometimes the only visual difference between Shanghai and Morocco is whether the quintet of spies is standing in front of a wall with scribbled Arabic characters or Chinese letters.

The action sequences also leave a lot to be desired. A Chastain and Stan chase in Paris that relies on sudden zooms and harmful hand camera movements sounds like a hollow pastiche of the Jason Bourne Shaky action style that is both a big cliché for action films and is now a thing of the past. Another car chase, winding its way through shipping containers and launching dock cranes, has similarities with the epic kit in. on Casino royalebut without the fun or the quality.

It might be easier to endure these less than tributes to superior films, though The 355‘s premise didn’t feel that out of date. The data key the quintet wants to recover provides the ability to hack bank accounts, security systems and information from around the world. It is apparently the only one that exists. In Mace’s words, the device could allow malicious countries to exist in the shadows rather than operating in the open. However, this popular technology isn’t new – it’s ubiquitous in real life. And the concept of unknown enemies wreaking havoc behind the scenes is just as common in spy films, with films like Skyfall and Public enemy to approach it in a much more fascinating way.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Kinberg seeks to fuse this old-fashioned concept into a feminist story with a benevolent goal but a lazy execution. Without justifying the jump, he calibrates these women’s mission as a united struggle against a misogynist system. But apart from the dialogue on the nose around the end of the film – the villain foams over an agent: “You were hit by a bunch girl! ” – Kinberg never points to a specific misogynist target to be addressed or defeated. He just clandestinely points out that the very idea of ​​five women working together is inherently empowering.

A later fight scene in which the quintet of spies fights a rogue agent in a high-rise building is heavily oriented Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocolbut without the same swing or intensity. By this point, these stars, who are all solid performers themselves, have carried an entire movie that is below their talent. The work they put into physical training and combat choreography is visible. This results in individual highlights: Cruz in particular offers a down-to-earth performance. But filmmaking undermines them at every turn, from the empty compositions (like Netflix’s naughty action film.) Red notice, The 355 relies on widescreen without filling the frame) to unimaginative editing and uncomfortable camera movements.

Kinberg desperately wants this spy adventure to work on par with other venerable action franchises, but it takes more than star power or even good cause to reach such heights. This kind of quality requires careful plotting and thoughtful writing. (It’s never clear how these spies can travel the world undetected in a modern surveillance state after their respective governments burn them.) The final scene, a gauche comeuppance for the sexist at the heart of this plot, involves the women looking at a happy family. They complain that their accomplishments will never be known or remembered. Unfortunately, it would be better for everyone involved if this poorly thought-out film was also forgotten.

The 355 opens in theaters on January 6th.