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“The 355” amasses some of the most talented and electrifying actresses in the world, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action picture.

Jessica Chastain is among them, and she helped shepherd the film from the beginning as one of its producers. It’s easy to see what the appeal is here: A glamorous and globe-trotting spy thriller in which women get to work together, kick ass, and save the day for a change. One of the through-lines in “The 355” is the way in which these characters get out from under the oppression of condescending mansplainers and actually get things done. You don’t have to be a gorgeous secret agent to relate to that dynamic.

And yet that notion is one of so many elements in director and co-writer Simon Kinberg ’s film that feel frustratingly half-baked. There’s not much to these women besides a couple of character traits, and the moments when they might reveal something deeper or more substantial about themselves are fleeting. The muscular physicality of the action sequences—the backbone of any film like this—is unsatisfying. Shaky camerawork and quick edits obscure the choreography and effort that went into staging the elaborate chases and fight scenes, making these moments more annoying than exciting.

Even the costume design is a let-down. In Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger , and Penelope Cruz , you have four actresses of significant craft and range who also happen to be stunners capable of wearing any kind of wardrobe choice with style and grace. Except for 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, which would have heightened the sense of glittering escapism. As for the film’s fifth star, Bingbing Fan, she’s barely there until the film’s very end, although its marketing would suggest otherwise.

What they’re all after is the blandest of McGuffins in the script from Kinberg (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”) and longtime TV writer Theresa Rebeck (“NYPD Blue,” “Smash”). It’s a flash drive containing a data key that can wreak havoc with the touch of a few keystrokes: shut down power grids and destabilize financial markets, launch nukes, and send satellites tumbling from the sky. Not that it matters what it does—it’s the thing that sets the plot in motion—but this happens to be a particularly uninspired bad-guy do-hickey. It’s so amorphous, you never truly feel the threat of its potential danger.

At the film’s start, Chastain’s hotheaded CIA operative, Mason “Mace” Brown, and her partner, Nick ( Sebastian Stan ), pose as newlyweds to meet up in Paris with the Colombian intelligence agent who has the device (an underused Edgar Ramirez ). (Chastain and Stan, who previously worked together on “ The Martian ,” are supposedly best friends who are secretly in love with each other, but they have zero chemistry.) Kruger, as bad-ass German operative Marie, intercepts it instead, leading to one of the movie’s many dizzying action sequences. Mace brings in her reluctant former MI6 pal, the brilliant hacker Khadijah (Nyong’o), to trace its location. But Cruz, as the Colombian psychologist Dr. Graciela Rivera, also gets dragged into the fray; implausibly, she was sent into the field to find Ramirez’s character and bring him home.

Eventually it becomes clear that all of these women must set aside their differences and team up to find the device: "They get this, they start World War III,” Mace says to Khadijah in one of the movie’s many, many examples of clunky exposition. But first, a fistfight between Mace and Marie involving frozen seafood, which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. And the moment in which they all stand around, screaming inane dialogue and pointing guns at each other before reaching an uneasy détente, could not be staged or shot more awkwardly.

One of the film’s most egregious sins is the way it wastes Cruz’s formidable presence and ability. She plays the frightened fish out of water, eager to get home to her husband and sons. As if her character’s inclusion weren’t contrived enough, she’s then asked to be cowering and meek, which aren’t exactly her strong suits.

And yet, there are a couple of scenes that indicate how much better “The 355” could have been. At one point, after achieving a victory, they all sit around drinking beer and swapping war stories, and the blossoming camaraderie on display makes you wish there were more of that. The idea of them rejecting their male-dominated agencies, being on their own, and having to rely on each other for survival is also intriguing—like a more violent version of “9 to 5.”

“James Bond never has to deal with real life,” Mace tells Khadijah at one point. “James Bond always ends up alone,” Khadijah responds, in an exchange that inches closer to something resembling real and relatable human experience. Somewhere in here is the seed of the idea that inspired Chastain in the first place: exploring the sacrifices women often make when they choose career over family, and chasing the tantalizing fantasy that we can have it all. But then the insistent, drum-heavy score starts up again, overwhelming everything, and it’s back to the next shootout or explosion.

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Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The 355 (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material.

122 minutes

Jessica Chastain as Mason 'Mace' Brown

Lupita Nyong'o as Khadijah

Penélope Cruz as Graciela

Diane Kruger as Marie

Fan Bingbing as Lin Mi Sheng

Sebastian Stan as Nick

Edgar Ramírez

Emilio Insolera as Hacker

Leo Staar as Grady

Simon Kinberg

Writer (story by)

Theresa Rebeck

Cinematographer

Tim Maurice-Jones
John Gilbert

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The 355 Reviews

The 355 left me frustrated and disappointed A great concept An excellent cast & terrible pacing, execution, & even one note characters.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

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.

Here’s the 411 on The 355 — it’s a bloated bore.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 2, 2022

The 355 could've been a much better spy thriller under a more capable director, but the kick-ass, highly-capable female cast saves the movie and made this an enjoyable action movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 3, 2022

“The 355” won’t exactly stick with you long after seeing it, nor is it the kind of movie that will wow you with its originality and vision. But it is light and breezy entertainment that happily wears its influences on it’s sleeve.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Oh-so-basic with its killer lady spies, their battle against misogyny and their quest to claim some much-needed on-screen space.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2022

A rehash of countless similar films, just as mediocre or insufferable, but here male camaraderie is replaced by female complicity. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 16, 2022

In this tangle of platitudes, feminist discourses, and vertiginous persecutions, the film is nothing more than a clumsy reflection of what it wants to enfranchise itself from. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 18, 2022

Offers no great surprises. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

The fact that the end product of this dream team-up is so bland and uninspired makes it feel that much more disappointing.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 9, 2022

So if most of the cast delivers, what's the problem? Clues point to Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck's script. It throws around terms like "brush pass" and "kill box," but also gives us dialogue like this: "A man must cover his tracks." "Yes he does." ...what?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 19, 2022

This film is an exercise in formula with an eye to setting up sequels, and the main reason it works as well as it does is the chemistry between the lead players.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2022

Aggressively average.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 26, 2022

The 355 boasts an incredible cast of powerhouse actresses from around the world, who are given a bland, formulaic script unbefitting of their talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Mar 25, 2022

What The 355 offers up is a perfect Saturday afternoon dad movie, but instead of starring Stallone or Eastwood or Bronson, it stars five women with six Oscar nominations and two wins between them. (And was written by the creator of NBCs Smash!)

Full Review | Mar 19, 2022

...the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a continuing emphasis on ineffective, lackluster set-pieces...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 26, 2022

This movie might have an incredible cast, but that doesnt save it from being completely mediocre, very forgettable, and honestly, a bit dull.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 23, 2022

The main problem is that Kinberg, a better screenwriter and producer than director, hired award-caliber actors to play low-grade roles. It didn't work.

Full Review | Original Score: F | Feb 12, 2022

Despite the amazing work of its cast, this espionage saga lacks thrills and originality. Full Review in Spanish

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

The movie has all the potential of being unchallenging escapist entertainment, but it's all too familiar to distinguish itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 11, 2022

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Jessica chastain, penelope cruz and lupita nyong’o in ‘the 355’: film review.

Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing also star in Simon Kinberg’s globe-trotting espionage thriller about an all-female group of operatives chasing a deadly cyber weapon.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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There’s ample action but less excitement in The 355 , a production launched with great fanfare at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival that Universal is now dropping on the marketplace with minimal fuss. The idea for an espionage thriller led by an ensemble of women was hatched by producer and star Jessica Chastain while serving on the Cannes competition jury the previous year, sparked by the billboards lining the Croisette touting potential blockbusters, mostly fronted by male leads. The impulse to put kickass women in charge for a change is commendable, but the journeyman result suggests the pitfalls of starting with the packaging instead of the storytelling inspiration.

Full credits

Distributor: Universal Production companies: Freckle Films, SK Genre Films, Universal Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment Cast: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, Édgar Ramírez, Sebastian Stan, Jason Flemyng, Sylvester Groth, John Douglas Thompson, Leo Starr Director: Simon Kinberg Screenwriters: Theresa Rebeck, Simon Kinberg; story by Rebeck Producers: Jessica Chastain, Kelly Carmichael, Simon Kinberg Executive producers: Richard Hewitt, Esmond Ren, Wang Rui Director of photography: Tim Maurice-Jones Production designer: Simon Elliott Costume designer: Stephanie Collie Music: Tom Holkenberg Editors: John Gilbert, Lee Smith Visual effects supervisor: Keith Devlin Casting: Avy Kaufman

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The 355 review: A sleek, silly, and surprisingly fun female spy thriller

Hey, ladies.

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

There's a general idea in show business that January is where movies go to die, a dumpster month for studios looking to quietly burn off the cursed and broken projects still lingering in last year's outbox. The fact that The 355 has landed there twice now (it was originally scheduled for release at the start of 2021, then delayed for COVID) fits pretty neatly into that narrative: Why else would a big-budget action film starring a cadre of internationally famous actresses slink so quietly into the post-holiday wasteland? A bland marketing campaign didn't help; neither did a corny, almost comically generic trailer . So it's a nice surprise to find out that the movie (in theaters this Friday and on Peacock Feb. 25) is frequently fun and far smarter than your average January-boneyard bear — a sleek popcorn spy flick that deserves better than slow death by in-flight entertainment, though that's probably its destiny.

The story begins, purposefully or not, in a wash of testosterone: a Colombian drug lord, a malevolent-rich-guy buyer, a SWAT team swarm emerging from the jungle. Except the product for sale isn't powder; it's some of kind of dark-web data key powerful enough to take down entire city grids and make airplanes fall from the sky. (As in most movies like this, the technology is generally so advanced it might as well be a wizard wand). When the narco's smartphone-size death star lands in the hands of a scared SWAT member ( The Undoing 's Edgar Ramirez), CIA agents Mason "Mace" Brown ( Jessica Chastain ) and Nick Fowler ( Sebastian Stan ) are sent to Paris to retrieve it. Unfortunately, a German agent named Marie ( Diane Kruger ) has the same goal, and a better grasp of the French Metro system; the end-times key gets away.

In the aftermath Mace turns to an old friend, Khadijah ( Lupita Nyong'o ), a former MI6 agent now working in London as a TED-talky tech specialist. This is the kind of crime she's made for, but a second failed attempt leaves them only with fewer bullets and an extremely reluctant new field agent: Penelope Cruz 's Graciela, a staff psychologist for Colombian intelligence who would very much like to be excused from this narrative and go home to her husband and kids. Instead she's conscripted into the team, along with Marie ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend") and eventually Lin Mi Sheng (Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing), another agent with a singular gift for IT. Hot pursuits in Moroccan souks and Shanghai high-rises follow, as they are wont to do when the fate of the free world is at stake; so, inevitably, does female bonding and a not-small body count.

The script, by Simon Kinberg ( Mr. and Mrs. Smith , the X-Men franchise), who also directed, and Theresa Rebeck ( Smash ), is both ludicrous and functional: One-liners and weapons (a fist, a lamp, even an oyster shell) fly; double crosses are flipped and tripled back again. The familiar marks 355 hits — sneering, stubbled villains; glittery international set pieces; things that go boom — follow the smoothed-down grooves of a thousand other thrillers, and everyone in it is so ridiculously good-looking they probably should have called it Only 10s . But the story moves along crisply, and the stars, who have all easily been in better films, elevate the material so breezily they tend to make even the most ludicrous moments float.

Also tucked into the broad flash and fight-clubbiness of the plot are keener little character notes: Chastain's Mace kills large men with calm efficiency, but when she's confronted with high scaffolding she stops to draw a sharp breath, then skip-walks like an awkward stork (or more refreshingly, a recognizable human). And Cruz's panicked, charming Graciela, the token civilian, finds uses for her therapy skills that actually make sense; when she and Nyong'o are on screen, it's not hard to remember there are at least two Oscars in the room. (The fact that all but one of the leads is over 40, though age is never mentioned or even implied, feels radical in its own way too). Maybe January will bury The 355 , but frankly it feels like the kind of movie bleak mid-winter was made for: Starry, silly escapism with pop-feminist flare and a passport. Grade: B

The 355 Is Proof That Women Can Make Middling Action Movies, Too

No actor working today is haunted by the Strong Female Character the way Jessica Chastain is haunted by the Strong Female Character. You know the type — an aloof, hyper-competent exterior hiding some instance of formative trauma, and no time for anything so frivolous as romance unless it leads to betrayal or tragedy. To be a woman working as an actor is to engage in an ongoing, exhausting quest for material that’s strongly written, or at least not rife with lingering stereotypes. Chastain’s not exempt from that struggle, but the more power she’s had over the parts she chooses, the more she’s gravitated towards ones that, in their attempt to counter sexist clichés, have created a whole set of new ones. The character she plays in the lady spy drama The 355 , a project she proposed and produced, is a steely CIA agent who’s introduced cheerfully beating up a colleague at the Langley gym when a new assignment arrives. Mace is a loner whose life revolves around her job and whose only confidant is her partner and best friend Nick (Sebastian Stan), who she falls into bed with right before the supposedly easy operation they’re on goes wrong and appears to leave him dead.

I’m making this sound more dire than it actually is. The 355 isn’t a total disaster — how can it be, when its cast includes Lupita Nyong’o as Khadijah, a tech-specialist who’s formerly of MI6, and Penélope Cruz as Graciela, a psychologist working for Colombia’s DNI? But its dullness somehow feels worse than grand failure, as though its aims were only to prove that a bunch of the most famous women on Earth can come together to make an action film just as uninspired and boring as men can. The 355 was directed by X-Men: Dark Phoenix ’s Simon Kinberg, who wrote the script with Smash creator Theresa Rebeck, and he’s genuinely terrible with fight sequences, which is a real issue in a movie that has a lot of them. Set pieces are chopped to barely legible bits in an effort to disguise stunt doubles, punches look blatantly pulled, it’s frequently unclear where characters are in relation to one another during chases, and somehow these globe-trotting badasses are all made to look awkward when carrying a gun.

Kinberg’s only other directing credit is for the aimless X-Men: Dark Phoenix , in which Chastain played the villain Vuk. His utter lack of any affinity for this kind of material speaks to the movie’s conflicted aims. Despite pulling together a Fox Force Five–esque ensemble of international stars — Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing round out the international ensemble as German BND member Marie and MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng — The 355 isn’t a stylized exercise reveling in the fabulousness of its cast. Aside from some nifty suits on Nyong’o, there’s shockingly little of the sensory pleasure, much less the fun you’d get from a Bond movie. The film aims to be something closer to Bourne, with its chase sequences on stolen motorbikes and a whole middle sequence set in Morocco, but it has none of Paul Greengrass’s kinetic brilliance or, failing that, the choreography that’s made more recent films from David Leitch and Chad Stahelski so thrilling. The 355 is determinedly without thrills, though as its characters chase a tech MacGuffin that can crash planes and bring down computer systems, they do trudge through their respective bits of backstory as though it were a chore to get out of the way.

Mace contends with the loss of the only person in her life. Graciela frets about her husband and kids back home. Khadijah has a partner who actually knows about her former life in the field. Marie (Kruger) has issues surrounding the father she turned in herself as a traitor. And Lin Mi Sheng (Fan) is the kind of personality-free embodiment of Chinese power that occasionally gets popped into would-be blockbusters now despite feeling insulting to everyone involved. The script includes hoary phrasing as though it’s required: “We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way,” Mace tells a suspect before she and the other women interrogate and torture him. “That’s the thing with partners — they get killed, or they kill you,” Marie intones during a lull in the non-action. None of this is as painful as the coda, when the film leans into the girlbossery that it previously mostly skirted, with Mace declaring to a foe that the identity of Agent 355, the female spy who worked for George Washington during the American Revolution, remains unknown because “someone knew her name, they just didn’t want the world to know it.” The 355 is, ultimately, a movie about how women are underappreciated in their roles of using violence to prop up their respective states, and its climax finds Mace triumphantly sending someone off to a black site after besting him by drinking her liquor straight. She’s not like the other girls, you see? Yaasss.

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Entertainment

‘The 355’ review: Jessica Chastain and company lead this solid if by-the-numbers spy thriller

Movie review.

It’s always a little suspect when too much is made of a big action movie being “female-fronted.” Unfortunately, Hollywood has decided lately that in correcting for decades of gender inequity in certain genres, it’s not enough to just make an action-packed movie starring more than one woman: They must let the audience know that they know that this is A Girl Power Moment. And frankly, whether it’s the lady Avengers assembling in “Infinity War,” a montage of Girls Doing Sports and Science in the latest “Charlie’s Angels” or all of “Ocean’s 8,” it’s never not insulting to its purported audience.

There have been subtler, cleverer and just plain better efforts at bringing women to the forefront of so-called male genres (from “Widows” to “Spy”), but it’s hard not to go into something like “The 355,” which has been written about as a female “Jason Bourne” meets “Mission: Impossible” for over four years, a little wary. We’ve been burned before, no matter how many Oscar nominees are on the poster. And this one is dripping in photogenic talent, with Jessica Chastain as a CIA agent, Diane Kruger as a German spy, Lupita Nyong’o as a former MI6 operative and Penélope Cruz as a Colombian psychologist who all find themselves searching for the movie’s McGuffin.

“The 355” — directed by Simon Kinberg (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”), who co-wrote with Theresa Rebeck (“Smash”) — is not an instant classic by any means. It is, however, a straightforward and solidly entertaining spy thriller that (mostly) avoids the impulse to pat itself on the back too obviously. Well, that is until a cringey “two months later” sequence at the end that leaves the door open for a welcome sequel. But there’s enough good preceding that moment to almost excuse it and much of that has to do with its cast, which also includes Sebastian Stan, Edgar Ramírez and Bingbing Fan.

The premise isn’t groundbreaking and at times even a little predictable: There’s a microchip floating around that can access any closed system, and all the bad guys in the world want it. And there are many, many intelligence agencies trying to stop it from getting in the wrong hands. More than a few aren’t just playing for one team either. As in most every spy movie for the past 50 years, there’s talk of impending World War III, but no one is coming to this for original stakes.

And “The 355” hits all the expected beats ably. Their globe-trotting brings them to sleek high-rises and crowded markets, they fight in hoodies and in heels, they get glammed up at a major auction (all spies deserve at least one black tie affair in the middle of all the chaos), and they even get to share a beer and a few war stories.

The main characters are a little simply drawn and you’re bound to get sick of Chastain’s nickname (“Mace”), but the actors give them enough depth to pass. Not only do you believe that these are all smart, capable women (who show you that instead of telling), they also all seem like they’ve lived lives before the cameras started shooting them. Nyong’o, in particular, is a standout as the tech wiz who was trying to move on with her life. Kruger does a great job elevating her character beyond “angry, loner German.” Cruz gets the short stick as the fish out of water, but she’s still fun to have in the mix.

Mostly, “The 355” succeeds where others have come up short because it put the movie and the story first — not the message.

With Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Sebastian Stan, Edgar Ramírez, Bingbing Fan. Directed by Simon Kinberg, from a screenplay by Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck. 122 minutes. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material. Opens Thursday, Jan. 5, at multiple theaters.

The 355 Review

Producer and star Jessica Chastain and director Simon Kinberg team up here to give the world a charismatic, female-centric team of super-spies to balance all those male-led spy thrillers. You just wish the story had been as innovative as the casting, and the twists less screamingly obvious to even those without secret-agent training.

Chastain plays Mace, a CIA agent sent to retrieve the sort of crypto-doomsday device familiar from a thousand other spy capers. She and partner Nick ( Sebastian Stan ) are interrupted by the BND’s Marie ( Diane Kruger ) and the device is lost to bad actors, in the geopolitical rather than entertainment sense. Cue a globe-trotting quest, as Mace and Marie team up to stop a world war.

These spies are both fierce and fun: Mace is spiky and competent but not without her vulnerabilities, and Marie is — as she admits — a mess. Computer genius Khadijah ( Lupita Nyong'o ) is sensibly wary of returning to the field when asked to assist them, and the press-ganged Graciela ( Penélope Cruz ) is refreshingly terrified and just wants to go home to her kids.

It's all fun and games until, in its last moments, it succumbs to the increasingly common disease of sequelitis.

The film's best scenes involve these four holing up in a safe house to negotiate their boundaries and formulate a plan; it's weakest when they spout girl-power platitudes and when a deus ex China turns up to move the story forward six paces in a single bound in the final act. Not that Fan Bingbing 's Chinese agent Lin is ineffective; she just feels grafted suddenly on. And, just as women have been asking for decent roles in male-led films for decades, it would be nice to see some nuance for Stan and Edgar Ramírez here, and more surprises in their arcs.

Still, it's all fun and games until, in its last moments, this film succumbs to the increasingly common disease of sequelitis, with a coda so determined to launch a franchise that it fails to be fully satisfying now. These women are effective and fierce; leave it to audiences to decide whether we want them on another impossible mission.

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‘The 355’ Review: Exile in Bondville

Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing star in an espionage thriller that’s slick but banal.

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By Amy Nicholson

Two centuries before James Bond 007, there was Agent 355, a lady spy on George Washington’s side during the American Revolutionary War who helped identify the turncoat Benedict Arnold . Her name was hidden from history, but her code number has been claimed by this slick and grim espionage flick that aspires to become an all-star, all-female franchise — the Spice Girls version of Bond. Jessica Chastain, a producer and star of the movie, even used Twitter to crowdsource casting suggestions for a “#BondBoy.”

Why not? But we’re going to need a better plot than one built around a bunch of heroes and terrorists chasing after yet another doomsday gizmo. Chastain’s Mace Browne, a C.I.A. workaholic repulsed by romantic commitment, is hellbent on securing a one-of-a-kind cyber-whatsit able to hack into and hijack any computer-controlled device on the planet, from a power grid to a plane. This device could start World War III, Mace warns an MI6 computer whiz, Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o), in a rusty clunker of a line that warns the audience that the only novelty in Simon Kinberg’s thriller is the cast. It doesn’t take a super sleuth to fill in the rest. There will be lectures on teamwork, confessions squeezed out “the easy way or the hard way” and speeches about the invisible front lines of modern warfare, all rote hubbub building toward a blowout gun battle that makes sure to set aside a bad boyfriend for a sequel.

But what a cast. Chastain and Nyong’o rumble with Diane Kruger, peer pressure Penélope Cruz and are struck dumb by Fan Bingbing , who saunters in halfway through to shake things up. Individually, the women represent the differing national security interests of the United States, England, Germany, Colombia and China; their pitiful male colleagues, however — the lovesick partner (Sebastian Stan) who uses a sting operation to make Mace playact as his fiancée, the distrustful boss (Sylvester Groth) who diagnoses Kruger’s near-feral street fighter with daddy issues — make a case for the women to form a feminist Brawlers Without Borders.

Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck’s screenplay races through five continents, and as many betrayals and switcheroos. (The cinematographer, Tim Maurice-Jones, seems most inspired by Shanghai’s iridescent neon blues.) The filmmaking deserves credit for refusing to leer as the ladies convincingly kick and punch — all focus is on the stunts, not on sex appeal.

Yet there’s a sense that “The 355” felt forced to pick between being sincere or being fun. It chose solemnity. As a result, it’s flat-footed even when the setups yearn to be playful. Viewers are not invited to giggle when a pursuit detours into a men-only bathhouse, or at a surreal moment in an undercover sequence when Chastain rips off her red wig disguise to reveal … her own identical red hair. The drums thunder as though they’re dead-serious about proving that women can make an expensive adventure that’s every bit as banal as the ones that boys crank out every month with basically the same plot. At least Cruz is allowed to get a laugh in a scene where her married soccer mom learns to flirt with a patsy. The twinkle in her eyes looks just like Sean Connery’s seductive gleam.

The 355 Rated PG-13 for copious male corpses. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters.

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Action violence in fantastic, fierce female spy thriller.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Women are strong, and they're even stronger togeth

Main characters are working for their government w

Powerful, physically fierce, skilled women from di

Long, intense action sequences involving guns, kni

Kissing. Woman unbuttons her blouse as a sexual in

A few instances of words including "a--hole," "son

Drinking throughout. Wealthy drug kingpin makes re

Positive Messages

Women are strong, and they're even stronger together.

Positive Role Models

Main characters are working for their government with the intent of serving the greater good, putting their own lives at risk so that others can go about their lives without worry. These women are shown to be tough, brave, intelligent, savvy, perseverant, and skilled at combat, and they work well as a team.

Diverse Representations

Powerful, physically fierce, skilled women from different countries/backgrounds (played by actresses who are White, Black, Spanish, and Chinese) work together to tackle a problem. They do work that's most often credited to men in the movies while, for those who have them, male domestic partners tend to the home front. The women are in control of their image and aren't sexualized. Casting defies Hollywood ageism with regard to women as action stars.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Long, intense action sequences involving guns, knives, sticks, punches, kicks, etc. Large-scale shoot-outs with machine guns. A woman leaps across a platform right in front of a moving train. Emotionally tense hostage situation. Assassination. Explosions. Beatings. Lots of shootings, but nothing graphic or particularly bloody.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing. Woman unbuttons her blouse as a sexual invitation, which leads to making out on a bed and the implication of sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few instances of words including "a--hole," "sons of bitches," "shite," and one use of "f--k you." Uses of "G-damn," "My God" and "Oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinking throughout. Wealthy drug kingpin makes references to his previous activity of selling cocaine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The 355 is an action thriller centered on a formidable, diverse team of international female spies played by Jessica Chastain , Penelope Cruz , Lupita Nyong'o , Diane Kruger , and Bingbing Fan. They're physically skilled, shrewd, brave, and untiring in their pursuit to do what's necessary to save the world from extreme danger. While each is tough and capable as a solo agent, the clear message is that women are stronger together. Each reflects the culture of her country of origin to some degree, and many languages are spoken. Frequent action violence includes highly choreographed combat moves, gunfire, punches, kicks, explosions, and stabbings. These scenes aren't graphic and don't have a huge amount of emotional impact -- but a hostage situation is far tenser and may be too much for sensitive viewers. A long-term friendship gets romantic, with kissing on a bed and the implication of sex. There's drinking throughout and reference to selling cocaine. Strong language includes "a--hole" and one use of "f--k." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Kids say (16)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Enjoyed the strong female characters

Pg 13 action movie with great female leads, what's the story.

In THE 355, a powerful weapon is in the hands of a mercenary, and government intelligence agencies from all over the world dispatch agents to obtain it. As the situation gets increasingly more dangerous, CIA spy Mace ( Jessica Chastain ) goes rogue, teaming up with three international agents ( Penelope Cruz , Lupita Nyong'o , and Diane Kruger ) to secure the item before it falls into the wrong hands.

Is It Any Good?

This twisty, suspenseful actioner is remarkably strong, kicking over stereotypes with its team of international secret agents who are powerful and smart and could go toe to toe with James Bond . And their gender here is no big deal -- they just happen to be women, as cinematic spies like Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne just happen to be men. They're not "sexy spies" or "glamorous government assets"; they're individuals with independent strengths (technology, psychology, force, analysis) who come from different parts of the world and approach life differently. This is much more than Charlie's Angels : It's an invigorating thriller that doesn't undermine or exploit women's femininity. While the script never really gets into the rarity of an all-female spy team, the characters themselves begin to realize that their gender has made them loners in a man's world and that there's comfort in finding a community of people who've walked a similar path.

This isn't a pat, predictable journey; it has many twists and turns. But the story isn't without its holes, either. Graciela (Cruz) is a Colombian psychologist who's pulled into the retrieval despite not being trained to be in the field at any level -- something she keeps vocalizing, and asking whether she can return home. It seems like there's an obvious solution to let her be excused, and, as you might expect, civilian involvement does ultimately create a vulnerability that any of these trained operatives should have recognized. But films often ask us to overlook little common sense details so that we can enjoy a bigger story. Graciela is ultimately the fish out of water who reacts as the average viewer might, helping us appreciate the danger and gravity of the situation the team faces. As Graciela realizes that she possesses the grit and capability to take down international villains while making her own unique contribution to the team, the intent is clearly to be empowering. There's a strong message here for women: Alone, they may make headway when they fight "bad guys," but when they band together, they're unstoppable.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the representations in The 355. Why is it important for movies to be diverse ? How is The 355 an example of positive racial, gender, and age diversity compared to other espionage films?

Do you think violence is glamorized in The 355 ? Does the impact of the violence change depending on who's involved? For instance, do you react differently to the violence when you see a man punching a woman in the face?

How do the characters in The 355 demonstrate courage and teamwork ? Why are those all important character strengths ?

What message is the film aiming to deliver? Do you think it succeeds?

What is the meaning of the title?

Movie Details

In theaters : January 7, 2022
On DVD or streaming : February 22, 2022
Cast : Jessica Chastain , Penelope Cruz , Lupita Nyong'o
Director : Simon Kinberg
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Character Strengths : Courage , Teamwork
Run time : 124 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material
Last updated : November 14, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The 355 Review

Meh-ssion: impossible..

The 355 premieres in theaters on Friday, Jan. 7.

Born of an idea star Jessica Chastain had while working with director Simon Kinberg on X-Men: Dark Phoenix about an all-female Mission: Impossible-style espionage team, The 355 starts off with decent energy and good intentions, but then devolves into a mess of sluggish clichés, predictable twists, and obvious arcs. And also, possibly, a (pandemic-necessitated?) green-screened Bingbing Fan. More on that later, though...

As an origin tale that clumsily lobbies for further adventures, The 355 brings together badass spies (and one psychologist) from different countries for a global squad of butt-kickers, at first all at cross-purposes, scrambling to get their hands on a dangerous piece of tech that can be weaponized to target anything that's online. For a while, mostly during the first act, the action pieces and chase sequences dazzle, enough to distract from the thin characters and emaciated dialogue. But somewhere around the movie's middle the story loses steam and the actual combining of these warriors into a functioning unit never quite rises to the occasion.

In their various ways, each of the four heroes (plus, the third act addition of the aforementioned Fan) is at a different state of their spy career. Some have no experience while others are too far gone in the game, distant and distrustful of everyone. Chastain's Mace, the CIA agent here, is just a few shades greener than Diane Kruger's German agent, Marie, as Mace still harbors hope for love, despite being burned before. Together, though, they're similarly driven and stubborn enough to be enemies at first.

The core cast -- of Chastain, Kruger (replacing Marion Cotillard, who can still be spotted in early publicity shoots), Lupita Nyong'o, and Penélope Cruz -- is solid, and Chastain makes for a stalwart, default Danny Ocean-type leader (right down to her weakness), but none of them are able to quite overcome the story's lack of wit and paucity of heart. If The 355 had few more moments of levity, or if it maybe made more of an attempt to rise above the absolute basics of the genre, the fact that each character is only given their "one thing" to care about would be easier to overlook.

From Paris to London to Morocco, the ladies' mission traverses the world, with each spot necessitating different types of tactics. Some require guns a' blazing while others call for formal wear and flirting. Chastain and Kruger get the most hand-to-hand action, and both shine as formidable fighters during strong stunt sequences, but the standout of the squad is Nyong'o, whose MI6 "gal in the chair" nicely shifts from cyber-scouring assistant to lethal field agent.

The best spy movie franchise is...

Cruz's character, sadly, feels like the most wasted element here, as the one woman in the bunch with no combat training. Not only does The 355 not take enough comedic advantage of her being the fish out of water, but the premise is hammered home so much that you expect the twist to be that she's actually a violent agent hiding her abilities. But that swerve never happens, which is a pity because it would have been the only fun twist in the entire story. And sticking with that, as the film heads into its endgame, it seems to lose most of its interest in what it started.

Sure, a lot of movies crumble at the finish, but The 355, particularly, seems to rush through a lot so it can wrap things up and spread its franchise wings. Not that what we're given as a villain is all that exciting, but everything here, past the midway point, is just treated like a stepping stone to get the characters into future installments.

Sebastian Stan and Édgar Ramírez round out the cast, playing their rather rote roles admirably. The best that can be said for them is that they feel way more vital to the film than Chinese star Bingbing Fan, who's not only a late addition to the story, but also seems like she filmed little to no scenes with the rest of the cast. And if she wasn't green-screened into the film (which it looks like), the staging sure makes it look like she was, which just from a blocking standpoint, makes this ensemble feel pretty uncoordinated.

The 355 did its first job correctly, which was to assemble a fun female cast who you'd want to see kick ass all over the world in an espionage adventure. It did not, however, deliver on its second (and arguably more important) task, which was to deliver a fresh and engaging story that fondly recalls old school while ushering in new school. Instead, it's all just underwhelming and obvious. Some of the action pieces are energetic enough to trick you into thinking there's substance to the story, but it's clear by the second act that this is an empty op.

More Reviews by Matt Fowler

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – The 355 (2022)

April 25, 2022 by Robert Kojder

The 355 , 2022.

Directed by Simon Kinberg. Starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing, Sebastian Stan, Edgar Ramírez, Sylvester Groth, Jason Flemyng, John Douglas Thompson, Jason Wong, Leo Staar, Raphael Acloque, Marta Svetek, Waleed Elgadi, Francisco Labbe, and Toby Sauerback.

When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, a wild card CIA agent joins forces with three international agents on a lethal mission to retrieve it, while staying a step ahead of a mysterious woman who’s tracking their every move.

The 355 is a hollow stab at female empowerment, but at least the casting department had the good sense to bring aboard a diverse and talented group of performers that almost make this work based on their no-nonsense attitude, charisma, and girl power chemistry. And while director Simon Kinberg (also writing alongside Theresa Rebeck, who conceived the story with Bek Smith) musters up a moderate amount of intrigue early on during globetrotting action sequences that work toward unifying the female agents of their respective government agencies, there is also something painfully predictable coming in the second half that comes with an unnecessary dysfunctional mess of ideas that extends the story beyond its welcome, becoming a mixture of tedious and overly convoluted (the latter is especially unforgivable considering nothing is interesting whatsoever about the villains here).

If you’re wondering what sort of nefarious master plan would see female agents of different countries tuning up in the first place, well, The 355 centers on a hard drive that falls into the hands of a mercenary (Edgar Ramirez). If you can think of something malicious, this device is probably capable of causing that destruction (shutting down planes in the sky, causing citywide powder outages, cyber hacking on a terrorism level, etc.). As for this mercenary, he’s merely looking to get rid of such power while pocketing some cash.

Meanwhile, CIA agents Mace and Nick (Jessica Chastain and Sebastian Stan, respectively) are sent on a field mission to Paris to retrieve the device. However, once they land and start making preparations in their hotel room, Nick decides this is a perfect and romantic opportunity to take their long-standing friendship to the next stage. On the one hand, there is reason to be thankful that The 355 quickly splits up this duo, putting Mace work alongside the other women brought into this dangerous fold; the only time this flick pops is when they are working together or swapping stories about how they became agents. A better movie would have kept that focus on bonding sisterhood without taking the wind out of its sails with what’s to come (technically, it’s a spoiler, but you would have never to have seen a movie before not to know what’s going to happen).

Fortunately, the other agents are magnetic presences such as a British cyber security expert capable of wrangling everyone onto the same page (Lupita Nyong’o), a German spy with trust issues played by Diane Kruger (one of the more fascinating characters as through her personal history and agency it’s evident that such a male-dominated profession has had its adverse effects when in reality her concerns are always valid), a Colombian psychologist (Penelope Cruz) that is justifiably terrified after getting roped into the conflict but naturally comes into her own as a means to protect her family, and a mysterious Chinese operator (Bingbing Fan) that’s one step ahead in the weapons race and hand-to-hand combat.

There’s one sequence where The 355 does come together as engaging espionage. It’s at a Shanghai auction house where everyone uses their distinct characteristics to obtain information on the whereabouts of the drive. In most films, these characteristics would also be their only noteworthy trait, but again, the performers imbue these characters with likability even if there’s not too much under the surface. It’s bare minimum female empowerment (at one point, a villain exclaims “how were you defeated by a bunch of girls” for crying out loud), and the action itself is a bit too choppy even if there is some fine stuntwork throughout, but the talent on-hand smooths out some of the rocky narrative. Unfortunately, there comes a point where Simon Kinberg loses control, complete with a ridiculous epilogue that even has the characters themselves mention how little sense it makes.

The result is inoffensive and instantly forgettable, only noteworthy for putting together such an impressive ensemble cast that isn’t necessarily wasted but doesn’t showcase anything exciting. However, there is potential for improvement; hopefully, a future The 355 sequel (yes, I may not think this is a good movie, but I’m not opposed to expanding on what’s here with more) digs deeper into the individual lives of these agents rather than offering glimpses of how they stand out from one another. A less silly threat inside an otherwise serious movie (that pleasantly not afraid to kill off supporting characters demonstrating the peril of the situation) also couldn’t hurt. The idea is solid; these talented women simply deserve better writing and stronger set pieces to work with.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Jessica Chastain charges at the camera as a crowd of men gawp in The 355

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The 355 continues the hot new streak of lousy lady action movies

Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Fan Bingbing are a strong team in a weak film

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Every portion of Simon Kinberg’s turgid, clumsy spy flick The 355 sounds good on paper: Five of Hollywood’s most acclaimed actresses come together to portray global intelligence officers fleeing from their respective governments, in a film melding Oceans 8 and the Jason Bourne, James Bond, and Mission: Impossible franchises with the recent trend toward aggressively female-fronted action films. (From 2021 alone: Kate , Gunpowder Milkshake , The Protégé , and Jolt .) In their unification, the women denote inclusion, empowerment, and validation. The 355 ’s nonsensical script, written by Theresa Rebeck and Kinberg, shoves those positives down audiences’ throats, without ever making them specific or insightful enough to signify anything.

For Kinberg, the writer of 2005’s Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie star vehicle Mr. & Mrs. Smith , the spy genre should be familiar territory. In fact, you can see him reaching for the same romantic dynamic between his leads here. CIA officers Mace (Jessica Chastain) and Nick (Sebastian Stan) open the film trying to recover a deadly data key being held in Paris by turned Colombian DNI agent Luis (Édgar Ramírez). Though Nick is smitten with Mace, and even proposes to her, she doesn’t want to give up her high-energy career in favor of a stable life. Chastain and Stan, unfortunately, are not Jolie and Pitt. They have all the chemistry of cheap red wine spilled on a white carpet.

Kinberg complicates the setup with a dull web of intrigue: Chastain and Stan are competing with other governments bidding to retrieve the data key. Their field agents include firmly independent German BDN agent Marie (Diane Kruger) and Graciela (Penélope Cruz), a married mother of two and DNI therapist who’s close to Luis and hoping to bring him back into the fold. The quartet are later betrayed by an unknown baddie whose identity doesn’t require much brain power to figure out. Their respective countries all believe they’ve become turncoats too, so to clear their names, Mace, Graciela, and Marie team with MI6 computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) and Chinese MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing).

Four of The 355’s five female super-spies stand around looking worried in formalwear

Of the quintet, Chastain is the least believable as a spy. When talking on her hidden earpiece, she often infuriatingly puts her hand nearly around her entire head, making her cover obvious in crowds. In the sequences where the five women try to infiltrate a Moroccan bazaar, costume designer Stephanie Collie opts for an ostentatious style over practicality, dressing Chastain in a giant white fedora and cream-colored suit. Who wouldn’t spot a lavishly dressed white woman who’s talking to herself, one hand covering her ear, amongst a bevy of plainly dressed brown folks?

The questionable costume decisions isn’t the only craft miscue. Though The 355 tries to maneuver with the kinetic verve of a globetrotting adventure, the marks of shooting on generic sets are all over this film. At times, the only visual difference between Shanghai and Morocco is whether the quintet of spies is standing in front of a wall with Arabic characters scrawled across it, or Chinese letters instead.

The action sequences also leave a lot to be desired. A foot chase involving Chastain and Stan in Paris, relying on sudden zooms and noxious handheld camera movements, rings as a hollow pastiche of the Jason Bourne shaky-cam action style, which is both a huge cliché for action films , and now passé. Another chase, winding through shipping containers and scaling up dock cranes, bears similarities to the epic construction setpiece in Casino Royale , but without the fun or quality.

It might be easier to stomach these lesser-than homages to superior films if The 355 ’s premise didn’t feel so dated. The data key the quintet wants to recover holds the ability to hack bank accounts, security systems, and information from across the world. It’s apparently the only one in existence. In Mace’s words, the device could let ill-intentioned countries exist in the shadows, rather than operating out in the open. This common technology isn’t new, though — it’s ubiquitous in real life. And the concept of unknown enemies wreaking havoc from behind the scenes is just as common in spy films, with movies like Skyfall and Enemy of the State addressing it in much more intriguing ways.

Lupita Nyong’o crouches behind a concrete pillar next to an unconscious man that she probably took down by being a badass in The 355

Kinberg tries to blend this stale concept within a feminist story with a well-meaning aim, but a ham-fisted execution. Without no setup to justify the leap, he calibrates these women’s mission as a unified battle against a misogynist system. But apart from the on-the-nose dialogue around the film’s conclusion — the baddie fumes to an operative: “You were beaten by a bunch of girls !” — Kinberg never gestures at any specific misogynist target to be addressed or defeated. He just cloyingly suggests that the mere idea of five women working together is inherently empowering.

A later fight scene that features the quintet of spies battling a rogue agent in a high-rise borrows heavily from Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol , but without the same verve or intensity. By this point, these stars, all solid performers in their own right, have carried an entire movie that’s beneath their talent. The work they put into physical training and nailing their fight choreography is visible. They accrue individual highlights: Cruz, in particular, offers a grounded performance. But at every turn, the filmmaking undermines them, from the empty compositions (like Netflix’s misbegotten action film Red Notice , The 355 relies on widescreen without filling the frame) to the unimaginative editing and queasy camera movement.

Kinberg desperately wants this spy adventure to operate on the same level as other venerable action franchises but it takes more than star power or even a worthy cause to accomplish such heights. That kind of quality requires careful plotting and thoughtful writing. (It’s never clear how these spies are able to travel around the world undetected in a modern surveillance state, after their respective governments have burned them.) The final scene, a gauche comeuppance for the sexist at the heart of this plot, involves the women looking at a happy family. They lament over how their accomplishments will never be known or remembered. It would be better, for all involved, unfortunately, if this ill-conceived movie was forgotten, too.

The 355 opens in theaters on Jan. 6.

Review: Espionage team-up of ‘The 355’ fails to come together

Four women in evening dress walk together in the movie "The 355."

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

As explained in “The 355,” a female spy known to history only by her code name 355 played a pivotal role in gathering intelligence against the British during the American Revolution. The film follows an international group of contemporary female intelligence agents who unite to track down a dangerous piece of technology before it falls into the wrong hands. Directed by Simon Kinberg from a script he co-wrote with Theresa Rebeck, the movie is low-energy entertainment that feels like a letdown given the talent involved.

Jessica Chastain , also a producer on the project, plays a hard-boiled CIA agent, while Diane Kruger plays her equally tough German counterpart. Lupita Nyong’o is a former British agent reluctantly brought back in, while Penélope Cruz plays a Colombian psychologist who has never worked in the field before. Chinese star Bingbing Fan is an operative of uncertain loyalties. As the five come together for a shared goal of saving the world — “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as someone says — they find themselves on the run from various government agencies while in pursuit of violent arms dealers.

The storytelling and plotting feel pulled together from spare parts of recent “Mission: Impossible” and James Bond films, with a disavowal here and some light parkour there and multiple destabilizing double-crosses. The high-gloss sheen and glamour of those movies, with their spectacular international locales and operatic action, prove harder to replicate here. The action sequences feel a bit perfunctory and don’t provide the necessary punctuation to the rest of the story.

Four women direct their attention at a man sitting at a desk in a scene from the movie "The 355."

The film’s most notable addition is its attempt to acknowledge that these women have, need to have, lives outside their jobs, even with an occupation like international intelligence. Chastain’s character, reprising emotional beats from the performer’s role as a CIA analyst in “Zero Dark Thirty,” has long had only her work, and the story emphasizes her isolation. In a moment that becomes the picture’s thematic centerpiece, Chastain says, “James Bond never has to deal with real life” to which Nyong’o responds, “James Bond always ends up alone.”

Cruz finds the most to latch onto, bringing an authenticity to her stress while constantly checking in with her family back home and adding a light screwball dusting when her character must awkwardly flirt to gain information. Kruger comes across as the most at ease with the picture’s action, while Nyong’o seems to be having the most fun, bringing a much-needed energetic brio to the story.

The signified cool walk-off music that leads into the end credits (and leaves the door open for a sequel) is Peaches’ song “Boys Wanna Be Her,” also the theme music to the TV show “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee.” And that’s indicative of the larger problem with the movie, that everywhere it should feel risky and energizing, it instead feels familiar and a bit tired. Simply having women star in a sluggish iteration of an airport dad-novel espionage-action story is not inspiring on its own. Despite a few scattered moments, the team-up action of “The 355” never fully comes together.

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language, and suggestive material Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: Starts Jan. 7 in general release

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The 355 (2022)

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‘The 355’: Cast, trailer and everything we know about the spy movie

Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz headline ‘The 355,’ a new female-driven spy movie.

From left, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o and Bingbing Fan in "The 355."

The slate of 2022 movies kicks off with a big, action-driven spy movie in The 355 . Featuring an all-star, female-led ensemble (and Sebastian Stan), The 355 looks to be the globe-trotting, thrill-filled experience that the movies were made for.

The female spy movie has seen a number of fun entries over the last few years, notably with the likes of Atomic Blonde featuring Charlize Theron, the Melissa McCarthy comedy Spy and of course, Marvel’s Black Widow with Scarlett Johansson. Can The 355 join the ranks of these films? Here’s everything we know about The 355 .

‘The 355’ cast

The 355 certainly isn’t lacking for star power, with the movie’s central team consisting of Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Bingbing Fan. That is a stacked cast that between them have six Oscar nominations and two wins (Cruz and Nyong’o), as well as plenty of action/spy movie experience in films like Zero Dark Thirty (Chastain), Inglourious Basterds (Kruger), Black Panther (Nyong’o), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Cruz) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (Fan).

In the film, Chastain is playing CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown; Nyong’o is MI6 computer specialist Khadijah; Cruz’s Graciela is a skilled Colombian psychologist; Kruger is the German agent Marie; and Fan is Lin Mi Sheng, a mysterious woman from the Chinese government.

The supporting cast isn’t too shabby either. Outside of the main quintet, The 355 features Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ) and Edgar Ramírez ( Point Break , Jungle Cruise ). Additional cast members include Raphael Acloque, Jason Wong and Leo Staar.

‘The 355’ release date

The 355 marks the official start of the 2022 movie calendar year, as it will be released on the first Friday of 2022, Jan. 7 in both the U.S. and the U.K.

The movie is getting an exclusive theatrical release, but we already know where The 355 is going to end up when it makes its way to streaming. As a Universal Pictures movie, The 355 will first be available for home viewing on the Peacock streaming service after its 45-day exclusive run in theaters. That 45-day run would end about Feb. 21, but that would likely be the earliest that The 355 would appear on streaming or digital.

‘The 355’ plot

Before we get into the specifics of the plot, something you may be asking yourself while reading all this is what is the significance of “The 355.” Well, the title is a reference to Agent 355, the code name of the first female spy working for American forces during the Revolutionary War. These modern day spies take on that iconic number to represent their new group.

Now, as for the story. Being billed by Universal as a “hard-driving original approach to the globe-trotting espionage genre,” here is the official synopsis for The 355 :

“When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown, will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie, former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one-step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng, who is tracking their every move.

“As the action rockets around the globe from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the opulent auction houses of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world — or get them killed.”

'The 355' reviews

Reviews are in for The 355 , but the critics aren't overly welcoming to the first movie of the 2022 calendar. What to Watch's review of The 355 calls the movie a "soulless spy thriller" that does not live up to the A-list cast that is has put together. Early consensus for The 355 isn't much better, as the movie currently scores as a 31% ("rotten") on Rotten Tomatoes and a 44 on Metacritic.

‘The 355’ director

Directing The 355 is someone who has a good bit of experience in the action/spy genre, Simon Kinberg. Kinberg broke out in Hollywood as a writer, penning scripts for Mr. & Mrs. Smith , Sherlock Holmes and multiple X-Men movies. He made his feature film directorial debut with X-Men: Dark Phoenix , which starred Jessica Chastain.

Kinberg is also sharing writing credit on The 355 with Theresa Rebeck, who came up with the original story idea.

‘The 355’ trailer

The trailer for The 355 delivers just about everything you could want in previewing an action movie — big set pieces, some awesome looking fights and some fun banter. Give the trailer for The 355 a watch for yourself below.

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Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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The 355 review – Jessica Chastain and her spy gang just don’t add up

The combined might of Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger and Penélope Cruz can’t enliven this lumbering action thriller

D iane Kruger slapping Jessica Chastain across the face with a frozen fish should be funny. The scene, sadly not played for laughs, is one of many wasted opportunities in this lacklustre action thriller. Chastain’s Mace and Kruger’s Marie, along with Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) and Graciela (Penélope Cruz), are international spies who team up to retrieve a “deadly cybertool” that’s fallen into the wrong hands.

Simon Kinberg’s film feels aggressively focus-grouped for the girl-boss crowd. “James Bond never had to deal with real life,” says mother-of-two Graciela with an eye roll. Winking dialogue about how women have been erased from history is similarly crowbarred in. Kruger smoulders as a German goth with daddy issues, and the only agent with any sort of swagger; Nyong’o, resplendent in a sweater vest, plays a tech specialist. Cruz is as luminous as ever, despite the fact that her role is mostly limited to crying and holding the phone. “We need another round… or like 10!” jokes Mace. Not even a post-mission pint in Morocco can liven up the gang’s tepid chemistry.

The Observer
Action and adventure films
Jessica Chastain
Penélope Cruz
Lupita Nyong'o
Diane Kruger

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The 355 (2022). Movie Reviews
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The 355 Movie Review
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COMMENTS

The 355 movie review & film summary (2022)
The 355. "The 355" amasses some of the most talented and electrifying actresses in the world, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action picture. Jessica Chastain is among them, and she helped shepherd the film from the beginning as one of its producers. It's easy to see what the appeal is here: A glamorous and globe-trotting ...
The 355
M.N. Miller Ready Steady Cut. TOP CRITIC. The 355 could've been a much better spy thriller under a more capable director, but the kick-ass, highly-capable female cast saves the movie and made this ...
The 355
Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Mar 25, 2022. Liz Shannon Miller Consequence. TOP CRITIC. What The 355 offers up is a perfect Saturday afternoon dad movie, but instead of starring Stallone or ...
'The 355' Review
Rated PG-13, 2 hours 3 minutes. He co-wrote The 355 with playwright Theresa Rebeck, who has a long history with TV cop procedurals, from NYPD Blue to Law & Order: Criminal Intent. But its thinly ...
The 355 (2022)
The 355: Directed by Simon Kinberg. With Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Bingbing Fan, Diane Kruger. When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, a wild-card C.I.A. agent joins forces with three international agents on a mission to retrieve it, while staying a step ahead of a mysterious woman who's tracking their every move.
The 355
When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason "Mace" Brown (Jessica Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong'o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Penélope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also ...
The 355 review: A sleek, silly, and surprisingly fun female spy thriller
Maybe January will bury The 355, but frankly it feels like the kind of movie bleak mid-winter was made for: Starry, silly escapism with pop-feminist flare and a passport. Grade: B. Jessica ...
Movie Review: Jessica Chastain's 'The 355'
The 355 was directed by X-Men: Dark Phoenix 's Simon Kinberg, who wrote the script with Smash creator Theresa Rebeck, and he's genuinely terrible with fight sequences, which is a real issue in ...
'The 355' review: Jessica Chastain and company lead this solid if by
As in most every spy movie for the past 50 years, there's talk of impending World War III, but no one is coming to this for original stakes. And "The 355" hits all the expected beats ably.
The 355 Review
The 355. Producer and star Jessica Chastain and director Simon Kinberg team up here to give the world a charismatic, female-centric team of super-spies to balance all those male-led spy thrillers ...
'The 355' Review: Exile in Bondville
'The 355' Review: Exile in Bondville Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing star in an espionage thriller that's slick but banal. Share full article
'The 355' review: Jessica Chastain and Lupita N'yongo headline a
Showcasing a thrown-together international team of female spies, "The 355" mostly feels like the pilot for a TV series, just with an inordinately good cast. Any movie in this genre that name ...
The 355 Movie Review
Kissing. Woman unbuttons her blouse as a sexual in. Drinking throughout. Wealthy drug kingpin makes re. Parents need to know that The 355 is an action thriller centered on a formidable, diverse team of international female spies played by Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, and Bingbing Fan.
The 355 Review
The 355 Review Meh-ssion: Impossible. ... Sure, a lot of movies crumble at the finish, but The 355, particularly, seems to rush through a lot so it can wrap things up and spread its franchise ...
The 355 (2022)
The 355, 2022. Directed by Simon Kinberg. Starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing, Sebastian Stan, Edgar Ramírez ...
The 355 (4K HDR) Movie Review
The disaster artist who got Dark Phoenix wrong twice presses the button on a Luc Besson-trademarked generic action movie randomiser for yet another piece of shockingly directed slick trash, wasting the ensemble female cast that got it greenlit in the first place.. Simon Kinberg's second - and possibly last - directorial effort, The 355, is a movie that will leave you asking many questions.
The 355 review: a powerhouse cast in a weaksauce Mission ...
The 355 continues the hot new streak of lousy lady action movies. Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, and Fan Bingbing are a strong team in a weak film
The 355
The 355 is a 2022 American action spy thriller film directed by Simon Kinberg from a screenplay by Theresa Rebeck and Kinberg, and a story by Rebeck. The film features an ensemble cast, starring Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, and Lupita Nyong'o as a group of international spies who must work together to stop a terrorist organization from starting World War III.
The 355 review
The 355 review - Jessica Chastain-led action thriller is a disappointing dud. W hile X-Men scribe Simon Kinberg's junky action thriller chooses not to reveal the meaning behind its truly ...
'The 355' review: Jessica Chastain in low-yield spy thriller
Review: Espionage team-up of 'The 355' fails to come together. Penélope Cruz, left, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o and Diane Kruger in "The 355," co-written and directed by Simon ...
The 355 (2022)
Permalink. "The 355" is an unfairly maligned film! A star-studded cast is led by Jessica Chastain in the role of Mason "Mace" Brown, a kick-boxing CIA asset chosen to track down a "drive" that has the potential to incite World War III. Mace is ably assisted by four other dynamic women in the just cause.
'The 355': Everything we know about the spy movie
The 355 certainly isn't lacking for star power, with the movie's central team consisting of Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penelope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Bingbing Fan.That is a stacked cast that between them have six Oscar nominations and two wins (Cruz and Nyong'o), as well as plenty of action/spy movie experience in films like Zero Dark Thirty (Chastain), Inglourious Basterds ...
The 355 review
The 355 review - Jessica Chastain and her spy gang just don't add up. The combined might of Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger and Penélope Cruz can't enliven this lumbering action ...

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