“The 355” - Film Review
The title of The 355 comes from a female spy during the Revolutionary War. Known only as Agent 355, this unknown woman was one of the first spies in the United States, and was part of General George Washington’s Culper Ring. She is believed to have helped to expose Benedict Arnold’s treason and was essential in gathering useful information for the American Patriots. The 355 sees five women from different countries and different intelligence agencies joining together to thwart a potentially world-ending disaster.
CIA agent Mace Browne (Jessica Chastain) is sent to Paris with her partner Nick (Sebastian Stan) for a run-of-the-mill swap. Luis Rojas (Édgar Ramírez), a Colombian DNI agent, has a stolen computer drive with the ability to hack into any computer system on the planet. With a click of a button, cities can be blacked out, planes can fall out of the sky, and stock markets can crash. This computer drive can bring the world to its knees. Mace and Nick are meeting Luis in Paris to swap $3 million for the computer drive. What’s supposed to be a simple mission turns into a chase through the streets of Paris after German BND agent Marie Schmidt (Diane Kruger) attempts to intercept the drive.
After she loses Marie during the chase, Mace decides to go rogue from the CIA to get the computer drive back. She calls on friend and ex-MI6 agent Khadijah Adiyem (Lupita Nyong’o) to help her track it down. They learn that crucial information about the drive’s location was given to Luis’ fellow DNI agent and psychologist, Graciela Rivera (Penélope Cruz). Mace and Khadijah’s attempt at gaining Graciela’s trust is interrupted by Marie, who is still after the drive. Learning they’re all on the same side, the women decide to team up to get the drive back. Their mission takes them to Singapore, where they meet Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing), an MSS agent, at an auction where the computer drive is going to be for sale.
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If nothing else, The 355 is a wonderful showcase of Diane Kruger’s talent. Most audience members will remember her from both National Treasure movies, Troy, or Inglourious Basterds, but The 355 will bring her front of mind yet again. Much more reminiscent of her performance in Alice Winocour’s Maryland or her Cannes Film Festival award-winning performance in Fatih Akin’s In the Fade, The 355 feels like it’s Kruger’s movie. It’s not as emotionally challenging as either Maryland or In the Fade, but it feels like Kruger was showing off. The role of hardened, nuanced German agent Marie is not particularly taxing for Kruger, but her performance is so magnetic and effortless that her absence from the screen is always felt.
While The 355 certainly does not bring anything electrifying to the action genre, there is something wonderful about seeing an action movie led by five women who are 38 years old or older. It’s especially wonderful that there are no unnecessary oversexualized shots of any of the women in a state of undress. They are spies (except Cruz’s Graciela), extremely competent ones at that, and they are treated with the same respect as James Bond in the camerawork and in the script. If Daniel Craig can continue to be James Bond into his 50s, more women in their 40s and 50s should be in leading roles in action movies.
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Unfortunately, as fun as some of the action sequences are, The 355 does not effortlessly flow from beginning to end. What grinds the film to a halt is Stan’s Nick, a half-hearted attempt at giving Mace a tragic reason to go rogue to pursue the computer drive. The plot twists involving Nick and Mace are so expected that calling them “twists” is giving much more credit than is deserved. When the focus of the film is on this ragtag international team of women, the minutes fly by. During these scenes it’s the sort of blockbuster that’s easy to get lost in, thanks to the chemistry these women have with one another. However, there are not enough of them. It’s like the screenwriter was too afraid to make these women the full focus of the movie and so added extraneous generic subplots instead of trusting them to carry the film. Bingbing’s Lin Mi Sheng doesn’t even appear until toward the end of the film. When the film is over, it’s clearly set up for a sequel and, should that come to be, the entire focus should be on these women.
There are moments of The 355 that work exceptionally well. Graciela’s fish-out-of-water experience in the line of fire, despite simply being a psychologist, and her insistence that the rest of the women really need therapy is a fun twist. The quick banter among the women is what could raise the film to the level of a standard blockbuster, but, unfortunately, it’s much too bloated. Not enough time is spent on the aspects of the movie that are actually interesting, and the dynamic performances of Chastain, Bingbing, Kruger, Nyong’o, and Cruz are minimized in favor of lackluster action sequences.
2 / 5 Stars
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