WHAT’S IT ABOUT
When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown (Oscar®-nominated actress Jessica Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Diane Kruger, In the Fade), former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Oscar® winner Lupita Nyong’o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Oscar® winner Penélope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan, X-Men: Days of Future Past), who is tracking their every move. As the action rockets around the globe from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the wealth and glamour of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world—or get them killed.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
It doesn’t take long for this female action flick to get to the point. Within the first 5-minutes, there’s a bad guy, an explanation, and a world-ending threat. I don’t have a problem with movies that toss you right into a situation, but this made no sense for all practical purposes. A bad guy created a technical device so powerful that it could destroy civilization as we know it. Instead of using it himself, he tries to sell it to a different bad guy. He gets betrayed, the CIA burst in, and the device is stolen. That would be an excellent start in an action movie if I were a teenager. As an adult, I was filled with questions. Why would the bad guys that had the tech want to sell it in the first place? This was the first dumb mistake in this 2-hour spy action flick. The likeability of The 355 is based solely on what you expect to see going in. If you expected to see a well-planned out action movie filled with top actors globetrotting, kicking ass, and sticking it to “the man,,” well you will be disappointed. The 355 does have some top-notch stars. They mainly consist of three female spies from different agencies forced to work together because of a technological threat. It’s never fully explained how every agency in the world found out about it, but I’ll ignore that for now. They do have some decent fight scenes, no matter how clunky they ended up being. And they do stick it to the man – eventually. By the end of the movie, I felt nothing but anger and confusion for this film. Even the title was pointless. So as long as you don’t mind sitting through 2-hours of mindless everything, you’ll have a good time.
OUR RATING – AN ESTROGEN-DRIVEN 5
MEDIA
- Genre – Action
- Street date
- Digital/DVD/Blu-Ray February 22nd, 2022
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French Canadian: DTS 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras
- DELETED SCENES
- CHASING THROUGH PARIS – Cast and filmmakers discuss the first day of shooting on THE 355 and how the choreographed chase sequence through the Parisian arcade set the tone for the entire production.
- ACTION THAT HURTS – A behind-the-scenes look at the stunts featured in the film’s centerpiece action sequence.
- RECONSTRUCTING MARRAKESH – From footage of construction to a set tour with Production Designer Simon Elliott, we’ll come to understand why the cast was so blown away by the accuracy of the Moroccan set.
- CHAOS AT THE CITY OF DREAMS – Cast and filmmakers deconstruct the film’s final set piece, from exploding ceilings to major shoot-outs, to the ultimate show-down fight between Jessica Chastian’s and Sebastian Stan’s characters.
- VFX BREAKDOWNS