3 Short Paragraphs: The 355

2022, Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) -- download

Are we surprised that the director of X-Men: Dark Phoenix directed had a movie flop at the box office? I am surprised that this very mediocre Women With Guns thriller actioner even made it to the theatre. But considering how utterly bland the X-Men movie was, I am not surprised that this one was very much by the books, which means, I was not all that put out by it. Again, just confused that it actually made it to the cinema when it felt more along the Straight To vibe of flicks like MI-5 which had being a spin-off of a TV series to blame.

Jessica Chastain (Ava) is a Mace, a CIA agent who loses her partner Nick (Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy) in an op gone wrong, right after she breaks her no-emotional-connection rule and and has smoochy smoochy with Nick.  The op was to recover a McGuffin, some sort of magical HDD that contains a program (with appropriately flash interface) that can interface with any network, any! Now its on the loose. Mace then travels around gathering a crew of other Women With Guns to hunt down the McGuffin and exact revenge for Nick's death. They include Diane Kruger (The Bridge), Penelope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express), Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther) and eventually Bing Bing Fan (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

So yeah, by the books. So that means we have some tense chase scenes in exotic European locales, at least one fancy dress party that needs to be infiltrated assisted by fancy tech (pretty much exactly like a recent episode of Picard) and eventually a twisty reveal (which wasn't much of a surprise) and confrontation in another exotic locale. The acting and production values are all pretty tight, if uneventful, but there was not enough of the stuff around the edges (as I mentioned when writing about Ava) to make it... interesting. A better version of this would be gathering women, with guns, from other existing movies and doing an Expendables style flick.

P.S. Are we wondering why it's called The 355 ? No, yeah and the incredibly boring reason is not worth explaining, in the worst (failed) attempt to create a franchise.