The 355
If James Bond came equipped with semi-autos and high heels.
Cast of Characters:
Mason “Mace” Browne – Jessica Chastain
Graciela Rivera – Penelope Cruz
Lin Mi Sheng – Fan Bingbing
Marie Schmidt – Diane Kruger
Khadijah Adiyeme – Lupita Nyong’o
Elijah Clarke – Jason Flemyng
Luis Rojas – Edgar Ramirez
Nick Fowler – Sebastian Stan
Director – Simon Kinberg
Writer – Theresa Rebeck & Simon Kinberg
Producer – Jessica Chastain, Kelly Carmichael & Simon Kinberg
Distributor – Universal Pictures
Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material.
The Rundown: Upon discovering that a top secret weapon has fallen into the hands of mercenaries, CIA agent Mason “Mace” Browne (Jessica Chastain) forms an international team-up with MI6’s Khadijah Adiyeme (Lupita Nyong’o), German BND agent Marie Schmidt (Diane Kruger) and Colombian DNI psychologist Graciela Rivera (Penelope Cruz) to thwart the potential danger, all while remaining one step ahead of mysterious Chinese MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing), who is tracking their every move.
If the mission fails, it’ll only start World War III… so – like – no presh or anything.
Pre-Release Buzz: The idea for The 355 first came about in 2017 when star Jessica Chastain proposed an all-female spy actioner in the vein of the Mission: Impossible and James Bond franchises to director Simon Kinberg while on the set of their X-Men film Dark Phoenix. Titling it after Agent 355, the code name given to a female spy who served during the American Revolution (and who’s identity remains unknown to this day), both Chastain and Kinberg signed onto the project as star/producer and director/co-writer/producer, respectively, with Chastain eventually co-starring next to Academy Award winners Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o and Marion Cotillard, the latter of whom would soon drop out and be replaced by Diane Kruger. Despite some production and release date setbacks due to COVID-19, the film has finally found a landing spot to open in the not-so-highly coveted first weekend of January.
Hey, we could’ve gotten another trash Leatherface prequel or Paranormal Activity 38 instead, so I guess I’ll take whatever victory I can get.
So setbacks or not, here we finally are. Spy films are basically a dime a dozen, but with this level of award-caliber onscreen talent, is The 355 able to stand out amongst the pack?
The Good: Clearly, this is sort of a passion project for Jessica Chastain, and to the film’s benefit, that shows in the performances. Of course, that is to be expected when you have names like Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Lupita Nyong’o involved, but there’s always the worry of A-list talent falling back on the Bruce Willis Sleepwalking to the Bank technique, which isn’t the case here. Despite the story and character limitations in the script (more on that in a bit), all five actresses are at least trying to make the most of what’s given to them.
The Bad: On paper, The 355 has the potential to be a great, slickly made action film. All the right ingredients are there. The final product, however, is a generic, uninspired slog to sit through. Yes, the cast show up to play, but they’re required to do the heavy lifting here; in fact, the script is so by-the-numbers pedestrian they have to do all the lifting.
Right off the bat, the film seems doomed from the beginning by revolving the entire conflict around an oh-so dangerous device that is so nondescript that the characters themselves might as well have called it “doohickey MacGuffin”. Hold on, though, ’cause if the bad guys get their hands on that doohickey MacGuffin, they could very well start World War III. We know that ’cause two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain somehow manages to say that trite line of dialogue without breaking character and bursting into hysterical laughter (again, the cast is blameless here). And that trite line of dialogue, among many other trite lines of dialogue, makes its way into the script ’cause director Simon Kinberg and his co-writer Theresa Rebeck were probably told by the studio that their pay would be based on how many overused, derivative one-liners they could cram into their utterly banal script.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“We put ourselves in danger, so others aren’t.”
“I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.”
Actually, that last one was from the classic spoof Airplane!, but to be honest, they might as well have aped that film too.
With a central conflict this generic, any sort of stakes or sense of peril is thrown out the window entirely, which, despite the efforts from the cast, strips the film of containing any emotional resonance. Once in a blue moon, the stars get a chance to give their one-note characters a little bit of depth, most notably during a pivotal square-off with the main baddie that provides the film with its only moment of genuine urgency. Even that said moment, however, is then undercut by the villain’s absolute idiocy in just leaving the women alive after getting what he wants from them, as opposed to killing them all when presented with a clear opportunity to do so.
‘Cause if he did that, then how could we possibly get all those sequels I guarantee won’t even make it past the green-lighting stage, much less see the light of day on a movie screen?
The Ugly: It can’t be overstated how appallingly style-less this film really is. It’s not like I was expecting Kinberg to deliver something akin to George Miller, Christopher Nolan or Denis Villeneuve, but Dark Phoenix, while certainly one of the lesser films of the X-Men franchise, still had a level of engagement that was able to hold my attention. This film, on the other hand, features a cast totaling six Oscar nominations and two wins, yet I still found myself checking the time on multiple occasions.
That should not happen, but then again, Don’t Look Up has God knows how many nominations and wins awarded to its cast, and I was pulling for the comet by about halfway through.
The phrase “style over substance” is often used to describe action films with bare-bone scripts that are compensated by a level of flash and style, much in the same way you can typically forgive a comedy’s flaws if it’s still funny or a horror film’s flaws if it’s still tense and scary. The 355 packs a double whammy for you by providing neither style nor substance. The action sequences are aggravatingly unintelligible, bombarding the viewers with a headache-inducing onslaught of shaky-cam footage and enough quick cuts to trigger seizures. It’s not until way late in the film where we get a standout, competently shot and choreographed martial arts sequence with Fan Bingbing that’s actually quite good, but again, it occurs so late into the film I was already long checked out by then.
Did this film need an intricate, labyrinth-like plot? Certainly not. Not just that, the film still could’ve gotten by with its blandest of bland World War III creating device, provided it came with some stylized gloss and action flair to bolster the actresses’ contributions. When there’s no story or sense of flair, what results is a film with as much life as a pet rock.
But at least Chastain’s character gives us an explanation of the story behind Agent 355. You know, ’cause at some point the title eventually had to play a part in its own movie… by way of a quick, throwaway explanation.
That’s first weekend of January for you, folks.
Consensus: There’s no denying the incredible onscreen talent that The 355 boasts, but it’s not enough to overcome the film’s stale action and tragically unremarkable story.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give The 355 a D (★).
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