The 355 (2022)

Nothing really extraordinary here, just your typical predictable derivative cliched "Spy Agents save the world" - girlie style, and all the bad guys are, well, guys.

The action was decent, as was the cinematography and score, and all the ladies performances were great. But the writing was dull and riddled with plot and technical issues, and the runtime didn't really need to be 122 mins long. I mean we've already seen this many times before, usually in 90 mins.

It's a forgettable one-time watch, because there's no other decent action films starting off 2022. It's a 7.5/10, rounded up to an 8 for the lovely all star ladies that tried their best with what Kinberg gave them to work with.

Fmovies: The good: great actresses are starring in this picture. I adore (almost) all of them. True fact!

The bad: these actresses are MISCAST. Read that again. MISCAST. Yes, exactly that is one of the two problems. WHY are they miscast? Because these great actresses could be my grandmother, yet they are TRYING to play "young" tough action characters and they are FAILING at it (obviously) because they look really old, because THEY ARE OLD and because they should only be starring in movies with grandmothers in them.

More bad: this story is so bland and tedious. This story has been told so many times before. Completely and utter TEDIOUS.

Not any good? Well, it's not terribly bad, compared to a B-movie. Although, I think I take that comment back. This movie is EVEN WORSE than a B-movie, because a true B-movie has NOT got any pretentions of having to take it seriously. This one movie does though. Sodd it! Binn it. Trash it. Forget about it...

3 out of 5 stars.

Decent action thriller. That tries to reignite a female action franchise like James Bond or Jason Bourne series. The cast ensemble is good. The action sequences are okay and forgettable. The plot is cliche and thin. Could have been better.

The 355 fmovies. I got to come to the conclusion that a certain type of producers think that if they cast minorities and/or women as our main characters the rest of the movie does not count. The 355 is such an example - the writing is lazy, generic, the action, so lala. You should not compare The 355 with movies like Jason Bourne or Mission Impossible, because then you realize how weak this one is. The 355 reminds me of Ocean's 8: generic, redundant, boring. The only "creative" idea the producer and director got is to put women in the first line - but that "idea" without real care to make a good movie is old hat now.

This supposed bomb so early in the beginning of 2022 may be the fascinating result of gender differences in movie appreciation. Looking at the predominate lower male reviews in contrast to the significantly higher but fewer female reviews unfairly skews the IMDb rating for this movie. Yes, this espionage action thriller appears to reveal too many weaknesses on the part of the poor female action figures. Yet perhaps in defiance of convention, The 355 offers up a more realistic portrait of how imperfect assassins and spies as human can be. The male audience is always looking for the ideal, superhero male who can dodge bullets and put down hundreds of antagonists like even Uma Thurman can in Kill Bill. Uncovering the layered plot of this movie reveals a real effort to upset the whole action thriller genre except for the underlying humanistic, compassionate element that usually occurs with most female driven movies. The action scenes are significantly different and offer up new, creative ways of looking at espionage and chase scenes. Even the ending of this movie has a soft not explosive touch for a change. The 355 is definitely a cut above most espionage movies including how seriously it takes it material with a nicely nuance dry humor element thrown in. This cerebral but invaluable ethical and emotional elemental perspective of this movie is a turn for the better in movie-making. Hopefully the female audience will come out in force to encourage the future transformation towards more relational, emotional, and existential hard-hitting action thrillers.

The storyline was very predictable, like all of the twists were given away in the trailer. However, the characters were well cast and the action was well coordinated. The women had good chemistry.