The 355: Boring Action

Simon Kinberg was given the short end of the stick when he made his directorial debut with X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The movie was originally supposed to be two parts but got condensed down to one following the critical, audience, and box office failure of X-Men: Apocalypse. The issue was that this change came during preproduction of the movie so on the fly they had to cut about half the runtime of the story, which is why it feels like it’s disjointed. When The 355 was announced, it was a way for Kinberg to bring himself out of “movie jail” and prove that he can direct a mainstream movie that will make money. Unfortunately, The 355 feels like a waste of that opportunity.

When it comes to action movies, the most important aspect of the movie shifts from narrative, story, or acting performance to the execution of the action. There is a reason why Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal are both box office draws for action movies when neither are exactly known for their acting abilities. When an action movie that does not follow a heist casts big names like Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong’o, it seems like it should be a red flag because the movie is not designed to be a dramatic meditation on humanity, it’s an action movie. Ultimately the cast feels wasted since they are not handling material up to their caliber and, had this been an Ocean’s Eleven style heist movie, it probably would have flowed better with the cast’s abilities being placed center stage.

The other issue is that the action that does happen in this movie is just not interesting. The ultimate saving grace of any action movie should be well-shot or visually innovative action which The 355 does neither. The action sequences do not do anything that has not been done a seemingly infinite number of times before this and does it better. This is a fatal error for this movie because all this movie does is remind the viewer of better movies that they could be watching instead. Right now, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The King’s Man, and even Ghostbusters: Afterlife are still playing in theaters and all have better action than The 355 does. For a movie that has its focus centered on the action, it does not work.

If someone really has to go to the movies and really has to see an action movie and really does not want to see a movie they have already seen, then sure, The 355 is an option. As bad as some of the other movies in the last few months were, almost any of them have better action sequences than the movie that is based entirely on the action. It seems that X-Men: Dark Phoenix was not an anomaly for Simon Kinberg, sometimes people are just better writers than directors. There is nothing wrong with that, but the studios should definitely think twice before giving him another big budget project to direct.

Final Rating: 3.5/10