Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Simon Kinberg
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, Lupita
Nyong'o, Sebastian Stan, Édgar Ramírez, Jason Flemyng
Agent 355 was an anonymous female spy who worked for the patriots during
the American Revolution. Her story is so fascinating that it's baffling
how Hollywood has never brought it to the screen. Instead we get
The 355, as generic a girls-with-guns movie as anything Andy Sidaris ever made
back in the day, though with a conspicuous absence of hot-tub scenes.
Like any guys (or gals) on a mission movie, we get a crew of protagonists
who all have their individual skills. Jessica Chastain's American
Mace is the leader; she doesn't seem to possess any defining skills other
than bossing everyone else around, which I guess is a pretty good analogy
for the US. Lupito Nyongo's Brit Khadijah is an ace hacker, which
means she shouts "We're in" after literally pressing three keys.
Diane Kruger's German agent Marie is unhinged with Daddy issues
(though Kruger is the only one of the actresses who comes off as a natural
fit for this sort of thing). Penelope Cruz's Colombian Graciela is
a…therapist, which makes her about as useful here as Deanna Troi was in
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The four are brought together when a drive containing a macguffin falls
into the hands of an evil billionaire played by Jason Flemyng, one
of those actors whose presence knocks about $30 million worth of
production value off your movie. In their quest to track down the drive
they visit various international locations and experience predictable
double and triple crosses. Occasionally they sit down and talk about how
in the good old days of the Cold War and the War on Terror they at least
knew who the enemy was. I'm pretty sure all these women would have been
children during the Cold War, but whatever.
Imagine an art installation in which somebody took a Mission Impossible
movie and edited out all the action sequences. That's pretty much what you
get here. It has all the impressive establishing shots of a big-budget spy
movie, complete with "Paris, France" and "London, England" title cards for
the geographically challenged, but otherwise it's as straight to VOD a
movie as ever made it to a cinema screen. What action set-pieces we get
are notably low-rent, filmed in that shaky, quick cut manner that makes it
all too obvious that none of the actors bothered to learn any fighting
moves. Director Simon Kinberg fails to grasp the concept of spatial
relations, leaving us with a headache as we try to figure out where
characters are in relation to one another.
The 355 can't figure out whether it's aiming for the tone of
Charlie's Angels or the Jason Bourne franchise. We get lots
of shots of our glamorous heroines walking through spaces clad in Oscar
night gowns, but we also get some surprising moments of sadism. When the
quartet show up at an auction dressed to the nines, you may feel cheated
that you didn't get a montage of the ladies spending the day shopping for
designer gowns and getting their hair done. Standing out like Scarlett
Johansson visiting a Catholic boys' school, the foursome are the least
secret agents imaginable, yet nobody seems to pay much attention to four
supermodels strolling around speaking all too obviously into their
earpieces.
Had The 355 embraced its sillier aspects it could have been
a fun romp, but it's misguided in believing it can compete with its bigger
budgeted rivals in the spy movie game. The marketing around the movie has
tried to convince us it's some revolutionary feminist statement, but six
decades after Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg were kicking ass on teatime TV
it just feels like a tired rehash of dated tropes.
The 355 is on Netflix UK/ROI now.