by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $8.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jessica Chastain, Sebastian Stan, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing, Jason Flemyng
Intro:
… a colossal waste.
Writer/director Simon Kinberg once again attempts to correct past mistakes, much as he tried (and ultimately failed) to do with Dark Phoenix, with a female-led action flick. One wonders if he’ll also end up trying to do this story ‘right’ again in thirteen years’ time, because he sure didn’t manage it here.
As high-profile and reliable as the main cast, no one here is given anything even remotely juicy to work with character-wise. Diane Kruger does her best, and Penélope Cruz manages so much with so little that the film should’ve just been about her, but Lupita Nyong’o and Jessica Chastain (who also produces, adding another ill-conceived action-thriller to her rap sheet) are left floundering to exist beyond their connections to the men in their lives.
It doesn’t help that the film’s overall action is so sloppy. Junkie XL does his best to bulk up the scenes with his soundtrack (once again trying to salvage blurry action beats, a la Zack Snyder’s Justice League), but much like the efforts of the actors, it’s all in vain.
As are the attempts to intrigue with the spy plotting; between starved characterisation and the sheer blandness of its attempts at globetrotting, it’s also painfully boring. Such things probably should have been expected from writers whose past experiences with spy narratives include xXx: State of the Union, McG’s This Means War, and Harriet the Spy.
The 355 is an apt description of how many seconds it takes before the sheer weight of missed opportunities sinks in. At a time when Gunpowder Milkshake, Kate, Shadow in the Cloud, Rogue, The Old Guard, and Becky are all still fresh in the collective memory, a film that coasts this plainly on wayward girlboss energy feels like even more of a colossal waste.
