The 355

 This review may contain spoilers!

The 355 follows Mace, a CIA agent gone rogue who steadily assembles an international team of agents to prevent a new, dangerous piece of technology from falling into the wrong hands. The film takes a long time to find a moment of strong writing but the shift from act two to act three is quite powerful. In this moment we see the protagonists actually taken by surprise by the main antagonist who dispatches several supporting characters in a way that really ups the emotional stakes of the film for a brief period of time.

 

Diane Kruger, who played Marie Schmidt, is a very tough role who embodies the loose cannon element of the film; I enjoyed seeing Kruger play to her character's intense past betrayal from her father and the deep distrust for others that history had left her with. Lupita Nyong'o, who played Khadijah Adiyeme, is a very intelligent character who knows how to control a scene with presence; Nyong'o is very generous at sharing a scene with a variety of performers and probably manages to maintain the best chemistry with everyone.

However, the best performance came from Penélope Cruz, who played Graciela Rivera. A lot of joy from this role came in seeing a character who wasn't this hardened secret agent, Graciela is a civilian consultant who is quickly swept in over her head. Cruz has this very light, innocent energy to her that makes her role a bit of a fish out of water; definitely not able to handle situations that turn into massive shoot-outs. At the same time this role has so much empathy and care for others, she constantly uses her intuition and understanding to help her team and friends cope with the difficult history shared amongst them. Her love for her family that is at the centre of her character is one of the best parts of the role, Cruz really sells you on this in the scene in which her loved ones are taken hostage. I also enjoyed how Cruz played up her character's ability to read people as a way of infiltrating a party and attaining information the team desperately needed.

As a spy film this really fell flat very early on and never really found its way to a point that really engaged the audience for long periods of time. The film introduces all these roles with long histories with one another; Mace and Nick have worked together for years and have romantic chemistry, Khadijah used to be an MI6 field operative which is where she befriended Mace. All of this heavy backstory is told to you with lengthy exposition or is just quite abruptly delivered. The flaw of this is we get scenes like Mace and Nick finally deciding to get together after all this time but the pair have literally only been in three scenes; there's no payoff for the audience and they can't feel what the film is clearly hoping they feel. The film is quite dull as a whole because the entire feature is just chasing one object around and watching it change hands, but the stakes for this never feel high. The film doesn't utilise the big bad weapon everyone wants in a way that directly affects our protagonists, so you just feel like you're watching action scene after action in which the big important Doomsday device is tossed around from party to party. The film doesn't have a clear antagonist; it should be Elijah Clarke but the film keeps putting the henchman, Nick, front and centre so that also lowers the stakes. The longer the film goes on the more difficult it is to believe that all these international operatives would stay together in an illegal operation this way, the film never works to convince you that its core premise works. Ultimately, The 355 isn't interested in showing you a global spy adventure, it tells you the plot as it happens which makes for a boring entry into such an expansive genre. The cinematography throughout the feature is quite blocky and falls back onto numerous simple wides, this crafts quite a simple style that also highlights some very underwhelming fight choreography. The editing was deadset on creating a slow pace and some of the transitions during scenes were ill-timed and didn't uplift and already lazy visual style. The score for the feature is entirely forgettable and often absent in key moments.

Jason Flemyng, who played Elijah Clarke, is very miscast as the main antagonist of the feature; Flemyng just does not feel like he wields the power to control a global mercenary operation. Edgar Ramirez, who played Luis Rojas, is a role with very confused principles; watching Ramirez flip flop in character over his motivation is just as confusing as how Luis is actually written. Sebastian Stan, who played Nick Fowler, really feels quite out of his element as one of the major antagonists for the film; Stan struggles to play threatening and his lack of on-screen romantic chemistry with Chastain is very telling. John Douglas Thompson, who played Larry Marks, is quite dull as the head of a major CIA branch of operations; Thompson does no work to make the twist his character is a traitor interesting to the plot. Jessica Chastain, who played Mace, is a boring protagonist for the most part; Chastain doesn't play strongly to the motives her role has for going rogue so you struggle to connect with her. Sylvester Groth, who played Jonas Muller, is framed as a father figure for Kruger but does none of the work to make this convincing; Groth really drags through the lines but fails to cut through to the emotional subtext. Raphael Acloque, who played Abdul, has absolutely no romantic chemistry with Nyong'o which takes the weight out of the only thing holding her back from joining the mission; Acloque's inability to connect in a meaningful way with his co-star makes his death scene quite a hollow one. Bingbing Fan, who played Lin Mi Sheng, was probably one agent too many for this film; her monotonous delivery and heavy exposition-based dialogue made her a dull third act entry into the film.

This is a spy film with no sense of character, no mystery and certainly no thrills to it. I would give The 355 a 2.5/10.