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Movie Review: The 355

Mike Tyrkus

Although The 355 was originally slated to open on January 15, 2021, Universal Pictures instead shifted the release to 2022 amid a worldwide surge in COVID-19 cases and resulting theater closures. Unfortunately, it does not appear as though the delay allowed the film to ripen any on the vine to be any more palatable than it would have been a year earlier. 

The rather convoluted story follows a group of female spies, thieves, and computer experts who join forces when a top-secret weapon falls into the wrong hands and must be retrieved, or the end of the world is inevitably nigh. These include, CIA agent Mason Brown (Jessica Chastain), former German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o), and psychologist Graciela (Penélope Cruz). All these women attempt to keep one step ahead of a mysterious adversary Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan) who seems to be shadowing their every move. 

Each episode of the film feels forced into a plot that is so full of holes that no amount of patching could save the overall proceedings. Attempting to graph the loose structure of even the laziest of James Bond films, The 355 fails at almost every turn. The introduction of each member of the crew is far less interesting than should be and makes each character more forgettable than the next. 

Director Simon Kinberg (who also recently helmed X-Men: Dark Phoenix in 2019) seems comfortable with the numerous action sequences in the film, but the connecting character-building scenes are where things get tripped up. The script, written by Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck, from a story by Rebeck, shows some flashes of promise in a few scenes but then gets just as quickly bogged down with its own complexities and failed attempts at cleverness. 

(From left) Graciela (Penélope Cruz), Mason “Mace” Brown (Jessica Chastain), Marie (Diane Kruger), and Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) in “The 355,” co-written and directed by Simon Kinberg. (Universal Pictures)

All the actors involved seem to be giving their all to the proceedings, but there is little that any one of them can do to keep things from inevitably going astray. Only Chastain’s Mace is afforded any actual character development throughout the film, and it is even questionable that it occurs at all. This is a shame as there was a solid story about group of craft, smart women here that could have, and should have been told, but was not. 

Feeling less like a fresh take on the genre than a less coherent retread of Ocean’s Eight (2018), The 355 paints itself into a corner with a sloppy structure and an unforgivably tedious plot that completely wastes the extremely talented cast that has been assembled and put through the ringer to no avail. 

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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