The 355 (2022) This movie exists for more or less the same reason as the all-female 2016 "Ghostbusters" remake.....
Each flied a flag of female empowerment in the movie marketplace......a bold declaration that top-of-the-line women movie stars can lead a big-budgeted, junky multiplex popcorn munchin' crowd-pleaser just like the guys.
.....and (we should add), not be resented, sneered at and mocked for the effort,,,,as was the case with the Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy "Ghostbusters"
Fair enough. Point taken. And BQ's been first in line to see women kick ass since we fell head-over-heels for Dame Diana Rigg dressed in a leather catsuit and hurling guys over her shoulders in the beloved TV series "The Avengers".
But after a weary, bored watch of "The 355", we need to ask this.....
If some of the best major actresses working today really did have the urge to blast away with glocks and kick men senseless........this is the best script they could come up with?
This guy was was the best director they could come up with?
That the burning ambition of these actresses (no less than 3 of them Academy Award winners) was to star in a by-the-numbers, connect-the-dots, painfully pale imitation of a Bond or Jason Bourne extravaganza?
Really?
We wouldn't dignify this movie describing its plot in any detail......the 9 to 5 clockpunchers, posing as its writers and director, merely recycled it from the the last 25 action movies they must have sat through as research and preparation.
5 super-secret, super-dooper secret agents (Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Bingbing Fan) chase, shoot and kung-fu their way through multiple world locations. The ladies never let up their hot pursuit of a little flash drive that can.......DESTROY THE CIVILIZED WORLD!
Feel free to yawn anytime. We did. A lot.
To nobody's surprise, the so-called director, a comic book movie bottom-feeder named Simon Kinberg (the catastrophic 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix') applies that ruinous Paul Greengrass editing to the fight-and-chase sequences......
So even those who'd sit through a junk movie like this for the adrenalin rush......well, they wouldn't be able to make out who's punching who anyway.....all of that stuff's chopped into worthless confetti.
We're guessing our four leads had a ball here, dangling from wires in front of green screens and rackin up a formidable minion body count just like all the guys get to do.......
And it maybe it never crossed their minds that the end product would look no better or worse than the machine-tooled, assembly line action movies that Netflix slaps together with algorithms.....or 700 other exact duplicate movies you can pluck out of the $5.00 Wal-Mart DVD bin.
Maybe they felt that it was enough to produce a film proving that a slew of gifted actresses could go slumming in a worthless piece of crap.....
Which, considering the time, money and talent spent on "The 355", seems like such a sad, pathetic, limited goal. 1 star (*)
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