She plays the frightened fish out of water, eager to get home to her husband and sons. One of the film’s most egregious sins is the way it wastes Cruz’s formidable presence and ability. And the moment in which they all stand around, screaming inane dialogue and pointing guns at each other before reaching an uneasy détente, could not be staged or shot more awkwardly. But first, a fistfight between Mace and Marie involving frozen seafood, which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. Graciela Rivera, also gets dragged into the fray implausibly, she was sent into the field to find Ramirez’s character and bring him home.Įventually it becomes clear that all of these women must set aside their differences and team up to find the device: "They get this, they start World War III,” Mace says to Khadijah in one of the movie’s many, many examples of clunky exposition. But Cruz, as the Colombian psychologist Dr. Mace brings in her reluctant former MI6 pal, the brilliant hacker Khadijah (Nyong’o), to trace its location. (Chastain and Stan, who previously worked together on “ The Martian,” are supposedly best friends who are secretly in love with each other, but they have zero chemistry.) Kruger, as bad-ass German operative Marie, intercepts it instead, leading to one of the movie’s many dizzying action sequences. It’s so amorphous, you never truly feel the threat of its potential danger.Īt the film’s start, Chastain’s hotheaded CIA operative, Mason “Mace” Brown, and her partner, Nick ( Sebastian Stan), pose as newlyweds to meet up in Paris with the Colombian intelligence agent who has the device (an underused Edgar Ramirez). Not that it matters what it does-it’s the thing that sets the plot in motion-but this happens to be a particularly uninspired bad-guy do-hickey. It’s a flash drive containing a data key that can wreak havoc with the touch of a few keystrokes: shut down power grids and destabilize financial markets, launch nukes, and send satellites tumbling from the sky. What they’re all after is the blandest of McGuffins in the script from Kinberg (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”) and longtime TV writer Theresa Rebeck (“NYPD Blue,” “Smash”). As for the film’s fifth star, Bingbing Fan, she’s barely there until the film’s very end, although its marketing would suggest otherwise. Except for a high-dollar auction in Shanghai, “The 355” misses the opportunity to dress these women in show-stopping ensembles as they travel from city to city, which would have heightened the sense of glittering escapism. In Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, and Penelope Cruz, you have four actresses of significant craft and range who also happen to be stunners capable of wearing any kind of wardrobe choice with style and grace. Shaky camerawork and quick edits obscure the choreography and effort that went into staging the elaborate chases and fight scenes, making these moments more annoying than exciting.Įven the costume design is a let-down. The muscular physicality of the action sequences-the backbone of any film like this-is unsatisfying. There’s not much to these women besides a couple of character traits, and the moments when they might reveal something deeper or more substantial about themselves are fleeting. And yet that notion is one of so many elements in director and co-writer Simon Kinberg’s film that feel frustratingly half-baked.
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