The 355 refers to the codename of a female agent during the Revolutionary War. Granted, it does set up an inversion of the espionage genre, but the execution is formulaic and forgettable.
It stars Jessica Chastain as “Mace” Brown, a CIA officer who poses as an undercover agent in Paris with her cohort (Sebastian Sean) to try and retrieve a device that could potentially lead to another World War. You can see the premise is already devoid of originality.
Things go awry when Mace chases down a German agent (Diane Kruger) who steals the device and Mace believes she’s part of the team who invented it.
Soon, she’s calling on an old friend (Lupita Nyong’o) who serves as a computer scientist for assistance and the two begin a globe-trotting journey to find the device.
Penelope Cruz costars as an agent from Colombia as well as being a psychologist who reluctantly gets entangled in the mess. Out of all these characters, Cruz is the one that should’ve had the most development, but instead, she’s reduced to standard fare for a character of her sort.
The 355 was directed and co-written by Simon Kinberg whose had a hand in the action genre, but he concocts a script that checks all the boxes and leaves little to no room for surprise or insight. Any attempts at setting up these women into three-dimensional characters are diminished by the plot catching up to them just when they’re becoming interesting.
The 355 plays like the Bourne movies crossed with Charlie’s Angels. Just surgically remove the intelligence of the former and the sex appeal of the latter. These ladies give it their all, but they’re stuck in a script that does have good pacing from time to time, but how they all come together is a contrivance that doesn’t give any sense of authenticity.
If Kinberg were given more time to polish his script, maybe we’d have something as exciting as some of the action, but even that fails.
Grade: C
(Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material.)
