Take this The 355 Quiz to find out which character you are. We update the quiz regularly and it’s the most accurate among the other quizzes.
“The 355” gathers some of the world’s most talented and electrifying actresses, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action film.
Jessica Chastain is one of them, and as one of the film’s producers, she has been instrumental in its development. It’s easy to see why this is appealing: A glamorous and global spy thriller in which women get to collaborate, kick-ass, and save the day for a change. One of the threads running through “The 355” is how these characters break free from the oppression of condescending mansplainers and actually get things done. You don’t have to be a stunning secret agent to understand that dynamic.
And yet, it’s one of many elements in director and co-writer Simon Kinberg’s film that feel frustratingly undercooked. There isn’t much to these women besides a couple of personality traits, and the moments when they might reveal something deeper or more significant about themselves are fleeting. The action sequences’ muscular physicality—the backbone of any film like this—is unsatisfying. The choreography and effort that went into staging the elaborate chases and fight scenes are obscured by shaky camerawork and quick edits, making these moments more annoying than exciting.
The 355 Quiz
The costume design is also a letdown. Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, and Penelope Cruz are four actresses with significant craft and range who are also stunners capable of wearing any type of wardrobe choice with style and grace. With the exception of a high-dollar auction in Shanghai, “The 355” misses the opportunity to dress these women in show-stopping ensembles as they travel from city to city, heightening the sense of glittering escapism. Bingbing Fan, the film’s fifth star, is barely present until the very end, despite the film’s marketing implying otherwise. Also, you must try to play The 355 Quiz.
They’re all after the most innocuous of McGuffins in the script by Kinberg (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”) and longtime TV writer Theresa Rebeck (“NYPD Blue,” “Smash”). It’s a flash drive with a data key that can wreak havoc with a few keystrokes, such as shutting down power grids and destabilizing financial markets, launching nukes, and sending satellites tumbling from the sky. It doesn’t matter what it does—it’s an event that sets the plot in motion—but this is a particularly uninspired bad-guy stunt. It’s so amorphous that you never really feel threatened by it.
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At the start of the film, Chastain’s hotheaded CIA operative, Mason “Mace” Brown, and her partner, Nick (Sebastian Stan), pose as newlyweds in order to meet the Colombian intelligence agent who has the device in Paris (an underused Edgar Ramirez). (Chastain and Stan, who previously collaborated on “The Martian,” are rumored to be best friends who are secretly in love with each other, but they have no chemistry.) Instead, Kruger, as badass German operative Marie, intercepts it, resulting in one of the film’s many dizzying action sequences. Mace enlists the help of her reluctant former MI6 colleague, the brilliant hacker Khadijah (Nyong’o), to track down the location. But Cruz, as Colombian psychologist Dr. Graciela Rivera, is also dragged into the fray; implausibly, she was dispatched into the field to find and return Ramirez’s character.
Eventually, it becomes clear that all of these women must put their differences aside and work together to find the device: “If they get this, they start World War III,” Mace says to Khadijah in one of the film’s many, many examples of clunky exposition. But first, a frozen seafood fistfight between Mace and Marie, which isn’t nearly as entertaining as it sounds. And the scene in which they all stand around screaming inane dialogue and pointing guns at each other before reaching an uneasy truce could not have been staged or shot more awkwardly.
One of the film’s most egregious flaws is how it wastes Cruz’s commanding presence and talent. She portrays a scared fish out of the water, eager to return home to her husband and sons. As if her character’s inclusion wasn’t clumsy enough, she’s then asked to be cowering and meek, neither of which are her strong suits.
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