The 355

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: F

               “January movies” has almost become its own subgenre. This particular breed of shitty filmmaking is most associated with horror films, but also routinely expands into other genres, and the defining characteristic is that a typical “January movie” completely defies memory. It is so bland and forgettable that it dares you to try to remember that it exists come Christmas time (and, in my case, dares me to try to come up with 700 words to say about it). It’s a movie that nobody cares about and plays to empty theaters for a couple of weeks, then quietly gets dumped to a streaming service and is never seen again until after humanity has perished and aliens are archiving all of our cultural artifacts and wondering what the fuck was wrong with us. Looking back on the list of movies I went to see last year, The Marksman and The Little Things are perfect examples of movies that I saw in January and I would never remember exist if I didn’t keep such a list. The 355 is perhaps the definitive “January movie.”

               The 355 doesn’t feel as much like a movie as it does an experiment in artificial intelligence. I’m convinced that some studio executive fed a bunch of spy and action movie cliches into an algorithm and had the computer spit out a screenplay. This could be a revolution in generic filmmaking, as it would avoid pesky shit like writers and even eliminate creativity-crushing exercises like test screenings and focus groups. I have no other explanation for this movie, as I refuse to believe that a human actually spent time writing this. The 355 is a masterpiece of blandness, a film that doesn’t have a single idea, scene or bit of dialogue that hasn’t appeared in a hundred other movies. I can’t believe that this was the product of legitimate effort without losing my last shred of confidence and hope for humanity.

               The story is about a group of spies that must stop a terrorist. I know, I know. That’s a plot that we’ve seen a million times. But get this: the spies are women! I hope you were sitting down for that because, holy shit, now I’m not sure where this zany plot could go. Well, how about this: the spies need to retrieve a device that can control technology (or something) and hold the world hostage! Spies trying to track down a generic device before it falls into the wrong hands…..fuck me, that’s just good writing. And a group of female spies trying to track down a generic device from generic villains? I haven’t seen that since the Charlie’s Angels movie from 2019 that nobody remembers.

               The 355 is so riddled with cliches that it almost seems like it was written as a parody, but made by people that didn’t get the joke. For the characters, we get one that’s good with gadgets, the red-haired one is feisty, the French one is aloof and standoffish and the Asian one is stoic. I was waiting for them to recruit a drunken Irish spy and an angry German spy, but I guess they didn’t have time. The plot is the most lazy McGuffin-based horseshit I’ve seen since, well, Charlie’s Angels. We get the scene where one spy visits another spy that she hasn’t seen for awhile and she says “I take it this isn’t a social call.” We get characters double-crossing each other exactly when you think they are going to double-cross each other. We get a twist villain reveal at the end that is so obvious from the first frame of the film that I had forgotten that the characters didn’t know that he was the villain. The Film Nurse leaned over to me and said “when are they going to reveal that he is the villain already?” and it gave me pause because it hadn’t occurred to me that it was supposed to be a surprise. If you have ever seen an action or spy movie before, you will be about five steps ahead of this movie at all times and wondering why you didn’t join the rest of society in ignoring this film’s existence.

               This movie has a lot of big name stars in it, but none of them seem to give a shit. Unlike writer/director Simon Kinberg, they all seem to be aware of what they are making and adjust their level of effort accordingly. I’m not even going to comment on individual performances, because everyone is sleep-walking through it and they all would clearly rather be anywhere else in the world than making this movie. I can relate, as I had similar sentiments with my experience of viewing this movie.

               Not all movies released in January are terrible, of course. Last year was rough, but January, 2020 gave me 1917 and The Gentlemen (though it also gave me The Grudge and Underwater). But, more often than not, they fall into this void in which no fucks are given and no memories shall escape. At two hours long, The 355 is an excruciating exercise in not giving a shit. I was initially going to give this a D because I was more bored than angry while watching it, but, upon reflection, I can’t think of a single nice thing to say about this movie. The only positive is that I won’t remember that this exists between now and when I look over my movie list for the year around Christmas and think “what the fuck is The 355?”

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_355#/media/File:The_355_poster.jpeg