The 355 is the epitome of a popcorn movie. The cast alone, which includes Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, and Bingbing Fan, is enough to hook an audience. Add to that action sequences where the weapon of choice is a spiked heel to the head, and it’s easy to reel in viewers. And that’s what Simon Kinberg’s The 355 wants, to bring its audience to the surface where badass women beating baddies worldwide is entertaining, and anything deeper than that doesn’t exist. Take, for example, the paper-thin premise that a hard drive can somehow destroy all of humanity, which requires the women, who would otherwise not be working together, to join forces. Their motivation is to save the world, of course. They’re the good ones, after all. This simplistic approach, which forces an evil/ethical binary, paired with a ham-fisted dialogue, flattens the film and makes the lulls between fight scenes feel more like retribution than respite. The result is a spy movie made for streaming while scrolling your phone or surfing the web. PG-13, 122 min.
The post The 355 appeared first on Chicago Reader.