And whatever action/spy cliche you can throw in there as well.
What this movie is surprisingly good at is having a great deal of characters that one could not give a flying toss about. Amazing how I did not care one way or the other what was about to happen to whom.
Acting was.. well, not award winning and the plot I can not say a lot about because perhaps it turned out amazing from that generic and insultingly flawed beginning. I just could get myself to watch this past the 30ish minute mark.
And this paint by numbers claptrap is 2!!!! Count them, TWO hours long? What an amazing accomplishment in pure polished mediocrity. If flaccid mediocrity were a category in the academy awards, this would be it!
Plot summary
When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason "Mace" Brown will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie, former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah, and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one-step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng, who is tracking their every move. As the action rockets around the globe from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the wealth and glamour of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world-or get them killed.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 2160p.WEBMovie Reviews
Expendable Double Oceans Eleven.
Almost fell asleep
They did almost everything to kill this movie - a shallow story, a very slow pace, bad directing, flat dialogs, drunk cameraman, music video-like editing.
I went to watch this movie because Diane Kruger is a good actress and she acts in good movies and she delivers.
But this time something went very wrong. Although Diane Kruger delivers this time too and she is the strongest actor in the movie, the movie itself just doesn't work.
The plot has a lot of holes. The pace is very slow, I even almost fell asleep at some point.
The dialogs are lateral and don't add to the story.
The cameraman's work is just crazy - there might be a single actress in the frame, but she will be slightly out of focus. Extreme close-ups and choppy editing in fight scenes make them unwatchable. It feels like the movie was shot not for an anamorphic frame it is shown because the framing is very weird - a lot of sliced heads. And yes, the jagged drunk-man camera is in its glory.
For the female badass agents movie the body doubles substitute is very noticeable in every scene, highlighted with the edits when the actress is replaced with a double, which doesn't help to sell the realism at all.
The characters are dull and the story is just very basic and weak.
Wait for it to appear on streaming platforms. Don't waste your money on movie tickets.
Modern Commercialism
The 355 is modern commercialism. It has little to say and is painfully generic, but it plays up its female-centric cast, hoping to make up for its thin substance. Diverse representation is a positive, but when it's solely a marketing gimmick for an underwhelming project, it's tainted. In fact, The 355 is fairly insulting because female led movies often get these poor efforts. Specifically, the film is a collection of cliches. Stock characters, predictable heel turns, unrealistic MacGuffins, exaggerated stakes, and some deus ex machina for good measure. Plus, the acting is bland (outside of Nyong'o, who brings legitimate emotion).
Technically, the camerawork is excessively shaky and the editing is overcut, fruitlessly compensating for dull action. The production design is uninspired and limited. The audio design is involved but sometimes misuses action sounds. The music is forgettable and the effects are overly sanitized. Lastly, the direction lacks unity, creating a mundane and inconsistent experience. None of this is necessarily terrible, but The 355 just isn't great. Overall, it feels like a halfhearted ploy that capitalizes on good-natured people who want to support minority empowerment. Unfortunately for those viewers, The 355 does very little for the female cause.
Writing: 4/10 Direction: 4/10 Cinematography: 5/10 Acting: 6/10 Editing: 5/10 Sound: 6/10 Score/Soundtrack: 5/10 Production Design: 4/10 Casting: 7/10 Effects: 6/10
Overall Score: 5.2/10.