The 355

Directed by Simon Kinberg, The 355 follows a group of international spies, including Jessica Chastain’s Mace and Diane Kruger’s Marie, as they team up to prevent a terrorist organization from starting World War III. It’s a familiar yet workable premise that is, for the most part, employed to hopelessly underwhelming effect by Kinberg, as the filmmaker, armed with a script written with Theresa Rebeck, delivers an often egregiously generic and bland actioner that boasts few elements designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a continuing emphasis on ineffective, lackluster set-pieces that are, by and large, hopelessly unable to lift the picture out of its persistent doldrums. (And it doesn’t help, certainly, that Kinberg, along with cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones, blankets such moments with jittery camerawork that renders them incoherent and excitement-free.) There’s consequently, as a result, little doubt that the capable efforts of a strong cast are squandered from start to finish, and it’s clear, too, that the palpably overlong running time paves the way for a second half riddled with momentum-killing lulls. (This is despite an admittedly effective late-in-the-game sequence wherein the leads’ loved ones are threatened and killed by the villain.) By the time the fairly anticlimactic third act rolls around, The 355 has cemented its place as a distressingly half-baked misfire that does, generally speaking, feel as though it should be much, much better.

** out of ****