If you go into this film expecting greatness you will be disappointed but take 65 as it is, a Jurassic sci-fi action movie, and you may just have fun.
BY ELLIOT LINES MARCH 14, 2023
A name like Adam Driver is a pull in itself. After his breakout as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe the actor has gone onto doing some interesting roles in movies such as Marriage Story, House of Gucci and Annette. Here he returns to a sci-fi action flick, 65, directed by A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. If you go into this film expecting greatness you will be disappointed but take 65 as it is, a Jurassic sci-fi action movie, and you may just have fun.
65 million years ago on the planet Solaris, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) makes the dificult decision to go on a 2 year space expedition to fund treatment for his ill daughter. On the journey he crashes into earth during the Cretaceous period. When he finds one young survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), they both must find a way to an escape pod that will help them get off the planet. But on this journey they must overcome the creatures that lurk on Earth all these years ago, the dinosaurs. During their journey Mills discovers that a planet killing asteroid (yes the same one that killed of the dinosaurs) is heading towards Earth, only giving them 12 hours to get to the location of their escape.
This is a fairly simple premise, the likes we've seen plenty of times before. Characters must get from one location to another to save themselves, there isn't really much more too it. What makes these types of stories interesting is the journey and obstacles in between. For me, adding dinosaurs into those obstacles makes this an instant win, it ups the stakes for the characters due to the unknown and after the lack of dinosaurs in Jurassic World: Dominion last year, it was pleasing to see them in action here.
Where the premise may be simple, the addition of dinosaur actions makes for some good action set pieces. These moments in 65 feel like the better parts of the movie, with real stakes and potential death. Dinosaurs are an unknown to all humans and that's what makes them so compelling on the big screen. There's no nice dinosaurs in this movie, getting right into the thick of the danger early on, which bodes well, especially as 65 has a tight 93 minute runtime.
This doesn't automatically make for a great movie however. One of the choices the writers made was to add a language barrier between our only two characters. This left a taxing influence on the dialogue throughout 65, meaning Driver would just repeat every single thing he said, with Greenblatt just responding with the same words. When it is just these two throughout the whole movie it's tiring to watch, feeling extremely repetitive and overall a lazy attempt to bond these two characters together, which you never really feel.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you 65 is a great, even good, movie. But with the short runtime and sci-fi dinosaur action this movie was right up my alley. If you're a fan of these genres you may just have fun with it, if not then 65 really isn't the movie for you.
STAR RATING
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