In The 355 (The 355), five secret service agents of as many different nationalities are left to their own devices by their superiors and must join forces to counter a global threat. If only they had had a helping hand with the screenplay, stuffed with clichés, and the insipid direction, to complete their mission! Entertaining but quickly forgotten, British-American director Simon Kinberg’s action flick squanders the formidable talents of a high-caliber cast of Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o and Fan Bingbing. What a pity.
Let’s have some sympathy for Jessica Chastain, who has already tried to embody the female version of the frighteningly clever and combative spy on the big screen. In action thriller Ava (2020), for example, she took on the features of a hired killer in turn hunted down, John Wick or Jason Bourne style. This time it’s on the franchise side 007 and Impossible mission (for the acrobatic and disheveled final scene) that is eyeing The 355. Chastain stars as a CIA agent who wants to get her hands on the ultimate weapon first, technology that can cause global blackouts, shut down all electronic communication, and knock mid-air planes out of the sky with the click of a mouse.
As in Ava, Chastain stretches a new string to her acting bow by convincingly portraying the role of a woman of action, and the same can be said of her talented colleagues Lupita Nyong’o (MI6 agent), Diane Kruger ( of the German secret services, who gives the reply to Chastain), Fan Bingbing (of the Chinese services) and Penélope Cruz, from the special forces of Colombia, where the first chapter of the story takes place. And as in Avaunfortunately, she has to play in an agreed scenario that Simon Kinberg’s clumsy production fails to lift, he who was only on his second stint behind the camera, after the flop dark phoenix (2019).
Considerable flaws
The 355 off to a bad start in several respects. In terms of history, we are quickly made to understand the power of this technological weapon about to fall into the wrong hands, those of Elijah Clarke, the very cliché of the wealthy megalomaniac who will spend the rest of the film trying to get said technology before Mason “Mace” Brown (Chastain) and his new partners, and who will face them in spectacular destinations like London, Shanghai and Marrakech. On the cinematographic level, then: the director seems unable to shoot an action scene without it looking awkward, and his fight scenes lack punch. Which, in an action film, precisely, constitutes a serious problem.
These special agents independently research technology for the first third of the film, until they realize that the success of the mission requires that they join forces. The German and the American give slaps, the British also knows savate, but specializes in computer tracking, and the Chinese is obviously an expert in martial arts. Only the Colombian, trained psychologist in spite of herself in this story, does not have the tactical skills of her new friends. She will compensate for her inexperience with her gifts of seduction (another cliché), while providing the most comical situations of this film with dialogues a little too serious for her own good.
The symbolism of the number 355 in the title is only revealed to us in the very last scene, but the real revelation is to be surprised that we never cared about it during the two hours that the film lasts. .