A movie this bad shouldn’t be so good
Fifteen years ago, “The 355” would have starred a bunch of guys and it would have been unwatchable.
Fifteen years from now, “The 355” could star a bunch of women and still be unwatchable.
But today, in 2022, we’re in a little pocket of time when seeing actresses such as Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Lupita Nyong’o in a brainless action movie is a kick. It’s fun. It’s something new. “The 355” is still trash, but it’s a pleasant kind of trash. It’s a good bad movie.
It’s an international thriller about the effort to gain possession of a new and terrible weapon. Oh, this weapon is bad. What does it do? Everything — everything bad that a weapon can do, it does. It can make planes fall out of the sky, launch nuclear warheads or turn off everybody’s electricity.
This weapon is the first unintentionally funny thing about “The 355.” It’s a cyberhacking device the size of a large iphone that’s described in such vague yet terrible terms that it becomes quite clear that no one connected with the movie — not the actors, the writers or director Simon Kinberg — knows the first thing about computers or weaponry.
“These algorithms are beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” someone says. You can bet that’s true.
Chastain is Mace, the American agent assigned to pay a ransom for the device. When we first meet her, she is beating up a guy in a martial arts training session. That’s our Jessica, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Other countries also want this device. A British agent (Lupita Nyong’o) decides to work with the U.S. because we have a special relationship. Meanwhile, Germany sends its own secret agent (Diane Kruger), and Colombia sends a psychiatrist (Penelope Cruz), albeit one with connections to national intelligence. Lurking in the background, there’s also a Chinese agent (Bingbing Fan). Early on, everyone is fighting each other more than they’re fighting the
bad guys.
As with a few of the “Fast & Furious” movies, there’s a moment when you want to say, “Hold on.” This is the worst threat to humanity since World War II. How come only five people are working the case? Maybe somebody ought to let Joe Biden in on this information so the Navy SEALS can get involved, or
maybe the Marines. Maybe a drone strike would reset the conversation in the right way.
But these are only fleeting thoughts, because Navy SEALS and drone strikes aren’t nearly as enjoyable as watching Chastain give some guy a dead-eyed stare as she explains to him, in an oh-so-calm voice, how she’s going to make the rest of his life
an unendurable hell of misery. That moment has become a feature of Chastain’s recent moves and a thing to look forward to every time.
SEALS are also not nearly as fun as those moments when Kruger forgets to pretend she has a German accent (she’s German, yes, but has little to no accent in real life), or when Nyong’o puts down her computer for a machine gun, or when Penelope Cruz seduces a Chechen oligarch, because … well, maybe there’s a good plot reason or maybe that’s just what you do with Chechen oligarchs. Hard to say.
The lesson here is something we all already know, but sometimes don’t admit: A movie doesn’t have to be any good in order to be good. Sometimes it can just be nonsense that’s easy to watch. “The 355” is a guilty pleasure, only don’t waste time feeling guilty.