REVIEW: The 355 Isn’t Great, But Isn’t Terrible
A group of international spies team up to stop a bad guy from ending the world is a storyline that should sound familiar to a number of people. Whether it is a political thriller novel or a spy movie, the story has been told countless times over the years. Sure, each creator changed parts of the story to fit their narrative, but the overall story remained the same. Now, Simon Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck are shooting their shot at the story in Universal Pictures’ The 355, and, honestly, their shot ends up being far too predictable and a little unbelievable at the end of the day.
The 355 finds five female international spies with the same mission, recovering a top secret weapon before it is used for nefarious purposes. But when the five women find their mission comprised, they must put their differences aside to team up to stop the bad guy before he can unleash World War III. Kinberg and Rebeck, who wrote the story, had all the pieces they needed to make this a wonderful spy thriller, but unfortunately the pieces just didn’t fit together. The story was extremely predictable; to the point where within the first 10 minutes you know exactly what is going to happen and how the rest of the movie is going to unfold. There were no surprises or nail biting moments throughout the two-hour plus film, which is a disappointment because there were a number of scenes where either of those two things could have occurred, but instead the tempo remained pretty stagnant.
Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing play our five female spies and only one of them truly pulled off the spy role. Bingbing truly stood out among the rest in this movie. Her portrayal of Lin Mi Sheng gave off the impression that she was not a woman you wanted to mess with. She was confident in her role and believable as a woman of mystery. Nyong’o’s Khadijah was also good, but felt more like a sidekick than an actual major player. Kruger had a hard time keeping up with the other two as her German accent kept coming in and out while Cruz, much like Nyong’o, also felt more like a sidekick than a major player.
Unfortunately, Chastain was the weakest of the bunch. As the technical lead of the 355, she didn’t give off the impression she was much of leader. Nor, did she seem like she was that good of a spy. There was a lack of confidence in her portrayal of CIA agent, Mason ‘Mace’ Browne. The five women were joined in the movie by Sebastian Stan, who ends up just playing the same character we have seen him play before. Stan has the ability to play a range of different types of characters, so I wish they had done something different with his character, but alas, I didn’t write the screenplay.
The 355 is an entertaining movie, but it is not entertaining enough to go out to the theaters to see. Instead of creating an empowering story with some kickass women, Kinberg and Rebeck somehow managed to get lost in the weeds. I highly recommend waiting until it is released On Demand or streaming before seeing the movie.
Grade: C