- Title: The 355
- IMDb: link
There’s a fun, if not bright, story in The 355 once things get going and the female operatives from various spy agencies around the globe decide to work together. I don’t know that the movie is going to do well enough to earn a sequel, but I would suspect a second film, without the need for such lengthy set-up, would be superior. The main takeaway from The 355 seems to be that a female-led action movie can be just as dumb as any with an all-male cast.
The plot, so to speak, involves a technological super-drive (the kind of device you only find in these types of movies) that can crack anything (planes, financial records, power plants, your Spotify account, etc.). Discovered by accident on a drug raid, an agent (Edgar Ramírez) in Columbia attempts to sell it only to see it fall into the hands of a black market auctioneer who plans to sell it to the highest bidder giving them the power to destabilize the world with the press of a few buttons.
The women on the case are CIA Agent Mace (Jessica Chastain) with a chip on her shoulder following the lengthy opening to the film, the loner German Intelligence Officer Marie Schmidt (Diane Kruger) who is teased as a possible double-agent, MI6 Cyber-Agent Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) forced back into the field from the comfort of academia, and a psychiatrist for the Columbian government (Penélope Cruz) who is in over her head. Bingbing Fan also appears in the second-half of the film from yet another rival agency who could possibly be friend or enemy to the group. Unable to get the drive on their own, and continually getting in each other’s way, the women eventually team-up as the second-half of the movie runs a bit more smoothly with some nice interactions between our leads.
When the action takes over, The 355 offers its share of fun. It certainly fits the mold of a big dumb action film, even if it snobbishly believes itself to be better than that at times. It’s not. Sadly, the script is filled with an excess of twists and late reveals. Only some of these work while others range from bewildering to laughingly bad. And, like Ocean’s 8, of course we get a scene for all the women to dress up to the nines and show up at a gala (because who doesn’t want to see a woman in an evening gown kicking ass?). It’s far from all it could be, but the action is well orchestrated for the most part and the cast does what it can to save the script from itself (even if they can’t always succeed).
