The 355
Ten Second Review: Another for the pile of films with good concepts that turn out to be forgettable, and more fuel for the fire stoked by chauvinist men who use Mary Sue character types to justify attacks on female focused casts.
Out of the gate I started to groan. We quickly realised we’d been baited with top tier actresses to watch someone’s nonsensical action film filled with one liners writers thought sounded cool in the shower.
Mace (Jessica Chastain) is on a routine exchange mission for the CIA. Drop a bag with money, pick up a bag with a drive that could end the world, simple. When the drop goes south, she’ll have to make a few friends to help recover what she’s lost.
I think I made that sound like a decent spy film and from the outset it is. Chastain, Kruger, N’Yongo, Cruz and Fan unite forces from across intelligence agencies to bring down a non-state threat. That sounds cool! Unfortunately there is a lot that can go wrong getting from that synopsis to a feature length film.
I could sit here and moan about this film from every angle, but rather than do that, I’ll pick a few key disappointments; the maguffin, the script and the tone.
The first is quick; like many others, I’m tired of these all powerful drives that have undefined world destroying power. They don’t make technical sense, criminals wouldn’t sell them if they had them and they make your writers (and subsequently your characters) seem uneducated. Pick a thing your device does and stick to it. Clear parameters, clear consequences. I assure you, real technology is as interesting, as threatening and as impressive as what you are writing, it’s not the move you think it is to make shit up.
Secondly; I know it sounded quippy and funny in the draft or around a writers table. I know people giggled at the joke when you said it and you got a rush from making your peers chuckle, but give those one liners a good self critical look before actually putting them in your film. You look bad, your actors look bad and your film looks bad. If it works then by all means, add that texture to your characters, but you have to see where it doesn’t and where it is add odds with your tone. Also, if you don’t understand the tech talk, don’t put it in. People who don’t care, won’t care that it isn’t there. People who know technical jargon are going to drag you. Edit your script, the first draft is a draft for a reason.
This relates a lot to the third problem, tone. What is the tone of your film? Who are your characters? What is their story? Does what you’ve written contradict one or all of these things? If you switch too often, it doesn’t look dynamic or cool, it looks like you don’t know what you were doing. Cohesive tone isn’t boring and doesn’t mean your characters can’t develop, it means their development isn’t unmotivated.
I really could go on. Talking about bad films is as fun, if not more so than talking about good ones. This was not worth seeing and will not be remembered.
