'The 355' Review: Girls Get It Done
PG-13: Sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material
Runtime: 2 Hrs and 4 Minutes
Production Companies: Freckle Films, Genre Films, FilmNation Entertainment, Huayi Brothers
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Director: Simon Kinberg
Writers: Theresa Rebeck, Simon Kinberg
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong'o, Édgar Ramírez, Sebastian Stan
Release Date: January 7, 2022
In Theaters Only
When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason "Mace" Brown (Jessica Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong'o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Penélope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan), who is tracking their every move. As the action rockets around the globe, from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the opulent auction houses of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world — or get them killed.
If you’re gonna watch The 355, it’ll be for the star power of the ensemble. You have a bankable cast of high-profile talents who are mostly good in their respective roles. Though led by Jessica Chastain as an American CIA agent, it’s the supporting cast that oftentimes steals the show due to the level of class and dedication they bring to their rather thinly-veiled characters. Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o are the only performers who kept me enticed and entertained throughout, for they felt like characters with a sliver of a personality. Kruger’s Marie is hard-edged and cunning, enacting chaos and badassery whenever she’s onscreen. Nyong’o’s Khadijah is the smart voice of reason. Cruz’s Graciela is the only non-agent, for she’s just a straight-up therapist, which makes her empathetic by default. The characters are typical one-dimensional archetypes, but the actresses interject some much-needed life into their performances. The writing valiantly makes an effort to allow the audience to get to know them all so by the time shit goes down and stakes are raised, you feel the intensity of the situation.
The second season of the Prime Video series The Boys satirized the faux feminist empowerment that’s been present in superhero movies and the majority of female-led films using the slogan “Girls Get It Done.” The 355 is one of those movies that cloyingly plays to that slogan. While it’s the best out of the mediocre, “You go, girls!” ensemble flicks I’ve seen in the last several years, this film suffers from being a blandly written and poorly filmed spy action thriller that makes you question why it was given a theatrical release when it’s best suited for the Netflix algorithm.
Have you ever seen any action movie ever? Well, you’re in luck because The 355’s plot is as frustratingly generic as any spy action flick in the genre. The entire plot is centered around — say it with me — an expensive hard drive that serves as a MacGuffin for agents of various parties to chase like wild geese. Apart from its by-the-numbers mission, it constantly enacts every cliche and plot beat in the book of spy flicks, ranging from fake-out deaths of characters you know will turn out as a “twist villain” that you can predict from a mile away to the reluctant alliances from rival agents. The major difference is that it adds the ♀️ symbol to the mix. The movie begs the question: Why reinvent the wheel when you can just put hashtag girl power into it and add little to no effort anywhere else?
While I did find entertainment value within some of the performances, all of the characters are bland. Chastain’s Mace is as good a lead as Robin from Teen Titans; she isn't that interesting and has a painfully generic personality as her diverse castmates run laps around her. The motivations behind the female-centric ensemble are backed either by the death of a man or adversity set by the men in charge. Though it’s not as egregiously pandering as other recent fares, there are ample lines of “girlboss” dialogue that make you roll your eyes to the back of your skull. It plays so unbearably straightforward that the lack of personality makes it dull to watch, which is a shame because it shows slivers of potential, especially during the latter half of the film. I just wish the screenplay didn’t act as if it’s breaking some sort of glass ceiling going like, “Hey, women can be spies!” As if Totally Spies and Kim Possible didn’t shape all of Gen-Z during the 2000s.
You have all this amazing talent with a bare-bones script on autopilot, but at least it has good action sequences… right? Haha. Nope. The 355 continues that fun trend of American filmmakers who don’t know how to direct action to save their lives. Much like *insert every action movie from 2021*, the shot composition is primarily done on handheld, meaning you get nothing but shaky cam and shifty jump-cut edits where you can hardly see what’s going on or who’s fighting who. It would also use cross zooms during the action sequences for some sort of third-party witness impact, but it falls flat. At times, you’re able to comprehend what’s occurring on-screen during the action, and some hits are cool but they both occur in small doses few and far between.
All of the functioning components that I found to be enticing started to show up more during the second half where the dynamics between the agents hit their stride and stakes get raised. That being said, The 355 is too convoluted and cliched for its own good. Maybe if it boasted better direction from someone who can work and write an action film, this would’ve been more effective as an exhilarating spy action flick. Otherwise, it’s aight. It does not need to play in theaters, for it belongs in the deep trenches of the Netflix algorithm along with other basic spy flicks that feel as if they were made by bots.
